Consider whether archaeologists of the far future will understand the social significance of the existence of the built-in ashtray — and its disappearance — standard on the SAGE computer display terminals of the 1950s. The Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) air defense system “was an automated control system for tracking and intercepting enemy bomber aircraft used by NORAD from the late 1950s into the 1980s.” While the heart of the system was giant computer called AN/FSQ-7, operators controlled the beast from terminals equipped with technological innovations which would not become common for decades: a CRT display which represented data in graphical form, a pointing device in the form of a light pen and modems for wide-area networking. But if SAGE situation displays were a harbinger of the future, the terminal contained features which were representative of things even then receding into the social past: the built-in cigarette lighter and ashtray. Significantly and probably to the astonishment of moderns, the consoles had no integral coffee cup holder.
The AN/FSQ-7 is the largest computer ever built,[citation needed] and will likely hold that record in the future. Each machine used 55,000 vacuum tubes, about ½ acre (2,000 m²) of floor space, weighed 275 tons and used up to three megawatts of power. … Each SAGE site included two computers for redundancy, with one processor on “hot standby” at all times. In spite of the poor reliability of the tubes, this dual-processor design made for remarkably high overall system uptime. 99% availability was not unusual.
SAGE sites were connected to multiple radar stations which transmitted tracking data (range and azimuth) in digitized format by modem over ordinary telephone lines. These digitized inputs were automatically prepared from analog radar inputs by the AN/FST-2B (or successor, AN/FYQ-47) at the radar stations. The SAGE computers then collected the tracking data for display on a CRT as icons. Situation Display (SD) console operators at the center could select any of the “targets” on the display with a light gun, and then display additional information about the tracking data reported by the radar stations. Up to 150 operators could be supported from each center. Each SD operator console was equipped with an integral cigarette lighter and ashtray.
The fabled cigarette lighter and ashtray were first described to me in the living room of a Raytheon engineer, who spoke of the “big leather chairs” and “finely finished situation displays” of SAGE with the kind of wistfulness that goes beyond nostalgia. He was talking about the terminals in the way one might describe a vanished way of life; in the way an Australian aborigine might describe the Dreamtime. It wasn’t that the engineer wanted the past back; it was simply that he knew where the past was and was looking back at it in the way a sailor looks out on the wake. And in the trackless path of hours, the vanished ashtray was the signpost that divided one era from another. Some events acquire significance because they happen to concide with what in retrospect was a divide. Right around the time SAGE was being introduced a light plane crashed near Clear Lake, Iowa with Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson aboard, killing them all. February 3, 1959 is widely known as “The Day the Music Died“. Don McLean in his hit single “American Pie” used the date as a convenient reference to a sea-change and people to whom American Pie’s references resonate have written volumes about the significance of McLean’s lyrics. The crash itself may have caused little; but the timing of the event made it a marker for a host of things. McLean himself says, “you will find many ‘interpretations’ of my lyrics but none of them by me… sorry to leave you all on your own like this but long ago I realized that songwriters should make their statements and move on, maintaining a dignified silence.” Which brings us full circle to the question of what construction social historians of the future will put on the day the ashtray was replaced by the coffee cup holder.
Oh, and there we were, all in one place
A generation lost in space
With no time left to start again
So come on, Jack, be nimble, Jack be quick
Jack Flash sat on a candlestick
‘Cause fire is the devils only friend
Oh, and as I watched him on the stage
My hands were clenched in fists of rage
No angel born in Hell
Could break that Satan’s spell
And as flames climbed high into the night
To light the sacrificial rite
I saw Satan laughing with delight
The day the music died
SAGE.
embedded by Embedded VideoYouTube Direkt
I took a tour of a SAGE relay site in the late 1960’s. It was outside a very small town in North Carolina, and was completely underground – or at least technically, since it appeared to have been built on the side of a hill and then covered with dirt. It was a fascinating place, and filled with novelties. Aside from the racks of electronics that enabled you to walk through the computer, the doors were incredibly massive, and barely opened halfway before starting to close again. Everything was insulated from the floor. The toilets were mounted on big springs.
The number of radar sites, antiaircraft missile batteries (both Army and Air Force), and jet interceptor units spread all across the countryside back then was astonishing. I read of one occasion where it was thought the balloon had gone up, for real, and F-86D pilots were ordered as they scrambled to expend all their rockets and then ram any enemy bombers left. And the pilots thought this entirely reasonable; a nuclear WWIII was thought to be a one-act play.
Now, today – On 9/11/01 when the mass hijackings occurred and airliners started hitting buildings, even in Wash, DC the Air Force literally had to scramble to scramble even a few fighters. The first F-16’s launched to cover the Capital had no missiles on board. 20MM gunfire would probably be ineffective at stopping a jumbo jet so they figured they would have to ram. Kamikaze actions had gone from last resort to first.
And, do you realize that Cheyenne Mountain is closed? That big NORAD facility is expensive to operate, so the magnificent mountain fortress has been replaced by some ordinary buildings. Go to Peterson AFB and you will see the original facility, a nondescript building that is horribly vulnerable. Now we are back to that, full circle. And stand by to ram.
This was a socially as well as technologically advanced operation. There’s a black officer at 6:23 in the video. The military was way ahead of the times in more than one way.
Very interesting post, Wretchard. It’s funny how everything looks old in this video, except for those gorgeous B-52′s.
Love this line it was simply that he knew where the past was and was looking back at it in the way a sailor looks out on the wake. And the day the music died brings to mind the comments of a friend after 9/11: What did we do to make them so mad at us? I can’t imagine anyone in this video, or any American alive at the time of SAGE, asking such a suicidal question. Perhaps 9/11 was the dividing line, where instead of teaching us that we were not invulnerable, the lack of another 9/11 seems to show it was just a glitch, a burp, a troubling anomaly, but nothing to be worried about. And since that time, even as we fight wars with historic valor and determination, a large part of the American people seems to echo that original question – look what we are doing to make them mad at us, if only we didn’t do anything, everyone would love us. The 50 million liberated? Bah! What about the three who were waterboarded – that destroys American honor and good will around the world! This bizarre perversity is mainstream thinking, repeated day after day in the paper of record, with the hysterical bleating of weaklings demanding our leaders be tried and punished for defending us. As in ancient Athens, where most generals and admirals were eventually banished or executed, since their efforts were never perfect enough for the baying democracy.
It’s not the day the music died, I hope it’s not the day America gave up.
Talk about nostalgia, it’s almost an anniveray for me. After 17 mos. of tech school at Keesler AFB, I arrived on 28Dec61 by train at my first duty station – St Albans, VT. About 70 miles south of Montreal, and 25 miles from the Canadian border, St Albans was the northernmost town (pop. 8,000) to have hosted a Civil War battle. Five Confederates took the train down from Montreal and held up the town, robbing both banks..
The SAGE building ahown was at Stewart AFB in Ossining, NY not far from IBM’s HQ in Poukeepsie, and was the Regional center for the NE US. Ossining is also where the infamous Sing Sing prison was/is(?) located.
My GIA installation team was charged with installing the latest GE FPS-7 search radar (followed by Ratheon a FPS-26 “height-finder”) at StA-AFS. The FPS-7 is shown w/o radome in the clip. At 2,700 ft. elevation in the middle of winter in VT (which is barely fit for human habitation, even if you don’t have to work outside) it was “b*tchin cold.”
As I recall, the “sail” was 54 ft. wide and weighed 5 tons. In operation, the side-lobes emitted by the radar where so powerful that it would light up small neon tubes we stuck in our caps, flashing 6 times per minute, or once every every revolution… even 100 yards away in the mess hall down the hill.
I am childless. Just kidding; no lasting effects. Then on to Greenland, King Salmon in the Aleutians, and VN.
Isn’t it interesting that we as a country had no problem deploying missile systems to shoot down Russian bombers loaded with nukes, but are hesitant to deploy the same to defeat missiles loaded with nukes. I never heard any arguments then, about the absurd notion “we wouldn’t get’em all.”
It looks like one of the few things that the obama admin will spend money wisely on will be a new electrical grid to bring more electricity in from remote wind/solar/geothermal locations.
Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), who supports both medical technology and wind farm projects, said it may take longer to pump the money into those projects, but said that is why Obama set out a two-year plan. In that time span, Nelson said, a “smart grid” could be funded that would connect wind farms and solar power hot spots around the country, delivering power in a cleaner fashion.
Wretchard defines the passing of an era thusly:
The fabled cigarette lighter and ashtray were first described to me in the living room of a Raytheon engineer, who spoke of the “big leather chairs” and “finely finished situation displays” of SAGE with the kind of wistfulness that goes beyond nostalgia. He was talking about the terminals in the way one might describe a vanished way of life; in the way an Australian aborigine might describe the Dreamtime. It wasn’t that engineer wanted the past back; it was simply that he knew where the past was and was looking back at it in the way a sailor looks out on the wake.
programmer also looks back somewhat dreamily:
In the Dreamtime, programmers were rock stars. I received a call (in a long ago time) one afternoon from the program manager of a site made somewhat famous by a Star Trek movie where Chekov is looking for “nuclear wessels”. They had a system crash and wanted me there ASAP. I caught a redeye flight from where I was to where I needed to be, picked up my rental car at the airport and headed for the base. I was traveling light and fast, so did not have time to stop by the office on the way out and grab my credential package. When I arrived at the gate guarded by two young Marines, I told them my name and who I was there to see. They had not been advised by base security to expect me. I did not have my usual pass, so they told me to turn around and leave. I became irate, they put their hands on their 45s and started to spread out. I rapidly calmed down, turned around and left, all the time under their calm, watchful eye.
I went to the nearest public phone (this was before cell phones), called the program manager and told him where I was, that I was going to wait exactly 15 minutes, then go to the airport and go home. He sputtered a moment, then said “Wait right there, I will send a car.” Ten minutes later, the base commander’s limousine pulled up with the base commander and the program manager in the back seat. We had no trouble getting on base. I fixed the problem, received profuse thanks from the base commander and profuse apologies from the head of base security with promises that in the future I would most assuredly be recognized by the gate guards (which I never had to test), and was escorted, once again in the commander’s limousine to the airport.
Today, if I have to fix a problem, I am given 15 minutes to fix it or lose the project to any of the many other programmers competing for work (around the world). I am not as rational as Wretchard’s engineer. I miss the Dreamtime.
Tony, we look at the bad in everyone but ourselves, to make us feel better about ourselves. The original sin?
” and in the trackless hours…”
Time never moves with urgency.It doesn’t write narratives but writers try. Sages try to understand but they never have all the information. You are better off reading the stories but then you are dependent on the quality of the writer’s vision to illuminate the landscape for you.
As you say it is the vision of the writers to come that will explain all this to my children.
Good post as always,
Happy holidays
imho one reason the bible is important to public policy today is that we are moving into an era where we are–in flying terms –flying on instruments. The bible provides the best guide.
The reason the bible is getting much less resistance from science map over elegantly in the top down sense from Godel’s work and from the bottoms up sense in chaos theory. Also, if you read a now nearly decade old book called “A short history of nearly everything.” –the picture of the edge where research scientists dwell these days across all the major disciplines looks nothing so much like the world the ancient shamans lived in–only this time they have the data to back up their visions. Part of the visions of the old shamans was an experience of awe and even terror in the presence of God’s creation. Our lives on earth are utterly contingent on a fantastic number of things that have to go exactly right.
Scientists in the 200 years between Newton and WWI knew just enough to be proud but not enough to be humble. Newton’s Principia was the basis for much science during that period. He himself was considered to be in near Godlike a stature in the english speaking world. Even in theological books he would be referenced during the 19th century as a way to back up certain christian heresies. He himself was an Arian Christian. (Jesus is fully Man but not fully God.)
One of the reasons that I compare today’s age with the early 1500′s is that in that age too there were parallel shifts in both theology and science.
Oh, and in those days (and now) radar coverage has/had “blindspots,” caused in our case by mountains in upper NY state. We had a small, remote autonomous installation called a gap-filler located in really remote Blue Mountain Lake, NY.
When BML stopped operating (2-3 times/year) in winter, we had to drive a 6X6 seven hours (depending on conditions, it sometines took 24) to that tiny town, ride in a snowcat (snowmobiles were not yet gov’t issue) for an hour, and snowshoe the last 50 yards up to the site. Occasionally at -25F and in 40-60MPH winds. The locks on the entrance gates were perpetually frozen, requiring one to remove one’s gloves to insert the brass keys, which we had to clip to our belts so they’d be exposed to the elements, because at body-temp they wouldn’t fit in the locks.
I never got used to working in those cold temperatures.
It’s easy to judge the past from the perspective of the future. Our age has gotten very good at it. The anti-smoking propagandist love to mock that 1950s era with their “what were they thinking” agitprop campaign. Which makes me wonder, what about our present time will be just as easily subjected to “what were they thinking”?
“What did we do to make them so mad at us?”
There’s psychological theory called transactional analysis that focuses on “messages” that are delivered to us, either overtly or covertly, as children that we then act on unconsiously as adults. So in a way the theory supposes that we are all a kind of Manchurian candidate.
Not all messages are bad, but of the bad ones the two most destructive are “Don’t grow up” and the deadly “don’t be”.
I think messages like this can be delivered to an entire culture, and this is why we see the response we do to aggression toward the west today.
BTW, on a individual level one can’t turn off these messages. Defeating them involves awareness of the faulty and destructive nature of the message and then choosing to ignore them.
On a societal level I find it heartening that the NYT and other “messengers” are collapsing. Maybe it’s a sign that society as a whole is beginning to ignore the message.
One of the best movie lines ever: “Rock and roll hasn’t been the same since Buddy Holly died” from American Graffiti.
They never let the two guys out of the freezer! Are there two engineers in suspended animation somewhere in upstate New York?
http://www.radomes.org/
Well, don’t think that we are not still at it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea-based_X-band_Radar
Of course, with Obama, one never knows if we will keep at it — he is so “progressive” and all.
Charles says the bible provides the best guide for public policy during this time we are “flying on instruments”.
First of all, the First Amendment prohibits the establishment of religion by the state.
Second, which bible? Jews have a 39 book Bible, Protestants have a 66 book bible, Catholics have 73 books, and the Eastern Orthodox have even more.
Third, the guidance provided by the bible includes marrying multiple wives (including one’s first cousins ala Leah and Rachel, Genesis 29), the death penalty for working on the Sabbath (Numbers 15), the ability of a father to sell his daughter into slavery (Exodus 21), a fine of fifty shekels for rape (Deuteronomy 22), the genocide of an entire people (Exodus 17:13), the…well you get the point.
Psalms 137:9 Happy will be the man who dashes your little ones against the stones.
http://www.radomes.org/museum/
http://www.palosverdes.com/lasthurrah/SAGE-discription.html
We created a generation of consumers. Consumers of TVs and Sex and Security. The knowledge of how much effort was expended to create that security was simply discounted. It became simply a cost, wealth that could be diverted to other projects. The product was assumed as a given, not to be maintained by reinvestment and every hint of inefficiency or error, (my God they smoked or the contractor turned a profit), in the initial production could be dredged up after to condemn the process. That is the morality of lawyers who have a license to criticize without the responsibility to propose a superior answer or need to consider the initial conditions that justified the program.
On the video display it shows a coastline. Does anybody recognize it? Could it be Vietnam or the Chinese coast?
Many pics here
http://www.mitre.org/about/photo_archives/sage_photo.html
During the years when computers were made with vacuum tubes or transisters, a young person could visualize the operations of the central processing unit. A bright kid could even buy some vacuum tubes or transisters and connect them with some switches and lights to perform and display simple binary calculations. At least, the kid could sketch a wiring diagram for such a simple calculator.
There was a real, visual relationship between the hardware in such sciene projects for kids’ education and the hardware in state-of-the-art computers for adults’ actual applications.
Now, when all the circuitries are squeezed onto tiny chips, I wonder if today’s kids visualize the CPU’s hardware operations. Even though today’s kids have grown up with computers, maybe they perceive the CPU only as a black box. When we of an older generation were kids, perhaps we understood better how the CPUs basically worked.
Classic Wretchard; Obscure fact noted large, technology and American Pie (Long version).
#9 Charles said:
“Our lives on earth are utterly contingent on a fantastic number of things that have to go exactly right.”
Scarily true. Part of the pride I get in engineering is that so few things go wrong. I live in Atlanta. Traffic on the perimeter highway here (and probably most other places with one) runs at either 10mph or 80mph. Automobiles of every description and state of maintenance driven by people who love life or dont care, who understand the consequences of their actions or dont, who pay attention or owe it, fully conscious or in various states of impairment, mixed in with trucks at the same speeds weighing upwards of 75000 pounds and the wonder is that really massive accidents are rare.
Famous video of all the air traffic on North America at night: http://users.design.ucla.edu/~akoblin/work/faa/color.html. 20,000 airplanes at a time. No collisions, nothing falls out of the sky. All safe home.
Cold safe milk in the fridge. More at the store.
Asparagus from Chile.
Polio? Whats that?
Corresponding with Wretchard in Oz.
The tentativeness is really secondary to the wonder of it all. My Mother’s people had an acetylene generator for lights in the house and a small house at the rear with a special function. Her surviving sisters are 97 and 103. And I’m in awe of all this?
We take much for granted.
#17 Michelle Renee.
Go away. Nothing for you here. Or Hereafter either, apparently.
Cannoneer#4,
Thanks so much for the links. I see the 764th in St Albans is having reunion in August that I will attend.
@Herb,
Just look at her blog and her “About” page. There is no Ignore feature here so just shake your head and move on. The first sense that error or illness (or Evil) destroys is the sense of proportionality.
@17,
As you would believe so shall you go through life. You are redundant.
“The Sultan said: “There’s evidence abundant To prove this unbelieving dog redundant.” To whom the Grand Vizier, with mien impressive, Replied: “Its head, at least, appears excessive.” –Habeeb Suleiman
Jim
I was an AF brat, geoffgo. I’ll betcha Fortuna got colder than St. Albans, and Clear colder still.
Herb: Fir #23 (and #34, I guess). Just so.
From Kipling’s The Sons of Martha
…
It is their care in all the ages to take the buffet and cushion the shock.
It is their care that the gear engages; it is their care that the switches lock.
It is their care that the wheels run truly; it is their care to embark and entrain,
Tally, transport, and deliver duly the Sons of Mary by land and main.
,,,
They do not preach that their God will rouse them a little before the nuts work loose.
They do not preach that His Pity allows them to drop their job when they damn-well choose.
As in the thronged and the lighted ways, so in the dark and the desert they stand,
Wary and watchful all their days that their brethren’s ways may be long in the land.
Raise ye the stone or cleave the wood to make a path more fair or flat;
Lo, it is black already with the blood some Son of Martha spilled for that!
Not as a ladder from earth to Heaven, not as a witness to any creed,
But simple service simply given to his own kind in their common need.
And the Sons of Mary smile and are blessèd — they know the Angels are on their side.
They know in them is the Grace confessèd, and for them are the Mercies multiplied.
They sit at the feet — they hear the Word — they see how truly the Promise runs.
They have cast their burden upon the Lord, and — the Lord He lays it on Martha’s Sons!
Sort of sums up our current dilemma, eh?
34=24
@ 24. Herb
It’s our resident MPD (sometimes tantrum) queen. Some of her personalities have, frankly, a lot to be desired.
I resemble that she picked this time names of my daughter and my cat. That really chops my hide when combined with inane commentary.
“I live in Atlanta. Traffic on the perimeter highway here (and probably most other places with one) runs at either 10mph or 80mph.”
Liar. I took the Atlanta bypass once in the 90s. I was going about 80. I was in the right lane of two, and was being passed repeatedly. On both sides.
On my only trip to that part of the country since then, I made it a point to go out of my way to avoid Atlanta, and especially the bypass.
The Loop
The only NASCAR track commoners can drive on. In some places it is five lanes wide and the big rigs go through there six wide!!
I go on it just to scare the bejeezus out of my guests when I am guiding in and around Atlanta.
Jim
At least we still know the context of the built-in ashtrays. In time, it may become one of these “bowing to porcelain God” interpretations, once the context disappears. A ritual object, as it were; that is a standard fare of archaelogy. A glyph from ancient Egypt that an engineer would interpret decidedly as an electric motor scheme, if not given the age and cultural provenance of the image, would become some elaborate description of the netherworld in an archaelogist mind and paper.
Re bible… Abraham came from Ur. He couldn’t take with him the city library, so the tales he told to his descendants were entirely dependent on his memory. He did cut corners and the generations afterward reinterpreted the tale within their cultural context. To get a better understanding of the initial segment of the Genesis story, you’d want to read the Sumerian originals. Or rather translations of preserved fragments. Intro.
Another sea change was the introduction of the Pill because it liberated women from carrying the burden of having to make a choice between being an employed adult human being and being a tied-down-to-the-home mother. Some among us (w.h.i.s.k.e.y) see this liberation as the downfall of western civilization.
Now, I’m seeing today’s headlines that the CIA in its infinite wisdom is bribing Afghan warlords with viagra pills. Great – in a country with two claims to fame (growing heroin poppies and raping everything in sight including small boys, goats and rocks) the CIA is going to enable prolonged rapaciousness.
I wonder if the CIA will now start furtively handing out birth control pills to the poor abused females of Afghanistan …
@ 35. NahnCee
Pill did have some positive outcome, but the truth to be told… it is an awful combination with the cultural neoteny and narcissist hedonism–that is when it is used by women that did not grow up, matured. Sadly, it is almost a rule rather than an exception, these day.
As for CIA handing out pills to Afghan females… isn’t that what Planned Genocide (err, Parenthood) is for?
When I worked in the Pentagon they came through and took out all of the ashtrays in the hallways. They were nice, stainless steel ones that looked like an inverted prop spinner off a WWII airplane.
The last USAF base I worked at they came through and took down all of the Fallout Shelter signs. The commanding General directed that; and believe it or not, his previous job had been the commander of a B-1 bomber wing. Not exactly a Gen Buck Turgeson, there.
Now, there are signs at the base showing the cyber threat category and the terrorist threat category.
Trivia quiz: What was the exercise codeword for the highest DEFCON category? The non-exercise, real world equivalent was Air Defense Emergency.
@RWE
Roundhouse
DHS Secty Chertoff’s op-ed in today’s WashTimes makes a vivid contrast with these memories of state-of-the-art world war defenses.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/dec/26/keeping-america-safe/
As a young boy, I read with unquenchable fascination of the fabulous X-15′s and the latest figthers. It seemed that every month our planes flew further and faster, even as they became ever cooler looking. We had complete faith in science and technology, we naturally expected new developments like SAGE would always arrive in time to save us, I think we even came to believe (as young boys at least) that technology would one day make the world a safer place.
Visionary sci-fi heroes, like Klaatu in “The Day the Earth Stood Still” cautioned us on the error of our ways, but that was just a movie. Surely we would find a way to stop the world-ending weapons of our enemies, the bombers and missiles, with even better bombers and missiles of our own! Ahhh, the future was sweet back then.
Listen to Chertoff now, instead of globe-spanning radars and algorithm-crunching computers, we have gone back to the way the Romans would have done it, by hand, man to man: On an average day, the men and women of my department will screen more than 2 million domestic air travelers, inspect more than 300,000 vehicles crossing our borders, check more than 70,000 shipping containers for dangerous materials, and secure thousands of pieces of critical infrastructure.
By design, our new (oldest?) enemies avoid our current day SAGE and Nike, so we resort to ancient means. Imagine if the Soviets, who possessed chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, had employed those weapons the way terrorists employ their weapons now, with suicidal fanatics strolling through our then-open airports, boarding crossings and ocean ports.
And what will be today’s SAGE and Nike and Genie, what technology will detect and destroy these new enemy techniques? Perhaps something like the tools Deckard used in Blade Runner to find the replicants would work to find the hideous beasts who hide in human clothing, the way SAGE would find bombers.
Way back then, dreaming of Mach 6 rocket planes, what young boy would ever dream of kamikaze killers spreading around the world? We thought that style of warfare had been annihilated just a decade or two prior, in the black sands of Iwo Jima.
An ashtray anecdote from the ’70s, complete with national stereotypes: I knew a guy employed in a research lab at Yale who went to a conference in Paris and had two days off to do a little sightseeing. He decided to take a train across the French border into Germany. The ashtrays on French trains in those days took both hands to operate; you had to hold up the lid of the contraption with one hand and flick the ash into the tray with the other. A German engineer traveling in the same compartment watched my acquaintance struggle with the thing and commented, “Typisch französisch.”
I entered the Marine Corps in the late ’80s working on Ground based, air control equipment. Our CPU was built into a 20′ X 8′ Shelter and had a hard drive featuring a spinning cylinder, not platters, standing about 4′ high and 3′ wide and weighing around 500lbs. I now have more computing power in my cell phone.
Only slightly OT, the Deutsches Museum in Munich has a wing dedicated to computers that is excellent. The entire museum is a must see and located in a great scenic spot.
#31 2X4:
I started to respond to her in her origin name but decided not to because I have not seen Teresita in a gratefully long time and didn’t want to stir her(?) up
Nancee, the pill did not solve anything that abstinence did not already solve.
Apropos of computers and tracking equipment of the past, CBS has a website with old episodes of Twilight Zone from its first three seasons (1959 +), including one that I remembered from my childhood because it made the hair stand up on the back of my neck when I first saw it. Called “I Shot An Arrow,” it’s about three astronauts stranded on a barren planet and lost by ground control.
Available at http://www.cbs.com/classics/the_twilight_zone/video/video.php?cid=621774886&pid=PFP824baqLvbXm1KNNpRCE0_36zaoYvi&play=true
Seeing the episode again now, I’m struck by how “primitive” the astronauts’ space suits look (they resemble desert combat gear), as well as the computers and tracking devices in mission control room in the opening of the episode. Rod Serling made very effective use of minimal stage sets, but even so, it’s interesting how dated the scientific gear looks almost half a century later. The plot line is still very effective, though, particularly in its insights into the uglier side of human nature.
SpeakEasy:
I concur. The Deutsche Museum in Munich is a must see. The aviation wing has aircraft that I never knew existed (I didn’t think that was possible.). Unfortunately, I toured that at about the same time that you became a Marine so there was no computer wing – that I found, at least.
B-47!
the pill did not solve anything that abstinence did not already solve.
Which explains the research into male contraception.
A couple things.
Suppose it had come down to a showdown between a B-767 and an F-16 without ammo.
Aren’t there a lot of things to try short of ramming? An F-16 is supersonic, and a couple of passes “booming” the B-767, would not that cause severe incontinence on the part of any pilot without combat experience. Yeah, yeah, suicide mission, but it still takes training not to spoil one’s ritual cleanliness.
Second point. I heard that the reason we pretty much gave up on air defense as being futile was the reaction to what happened when the Navy felt left out of the strategic equation, and before they got their Polaris system, the Navy version of a nuclear bomber was a Douglas Skyraider , carrier launched, loaded down with long range fuel tanks and one atomic munition. The Navy would run war games against the El Monte Nike site, which they won by “flying under the radar” with a late WW-II vintage single-engine prop plane.
Third point.
When the Russian strategic threat changed from their (nearly nonexistent) bomber fleet to their (initially nonexistent but later plentiful) long range missiles, the thought was that any kind of defense was futile and the only hope was in MAD.
Now bombers have their vulnerabilities from air defense, but bombers are a known quantity, and you can conduct exercises with them to find out what percentage you can put in the air on any given day and on how accurate your bombardiers are.
With missiles, it is really anyone’s guess that one of those things can leave the silo or launch pad, now is it? Sure, you can perform drills with your launch crews, and you can pull missiles out of service and fire them on test ranges. But you don’t really get to practice launching salvos of these things the way you get to practice flying your bombers.
What if Ivan pushed the Big Red Button and nothing happened? Emmett Tyrrell of the American Spectator joked about this when Mathias Rust flew his Cessna into Red Square, commenting that this is what must have taken place in response, and at the time I thought in poor taste to make jokes of this sort. But on the other hand, what kind of realistic probability could one assign to successfully launching a first strike using missiles, or even any kind of strike, given how finicky missiles were when you tried to conduct one-of launches of people and scientific payloads into space?
@ 43. SpeakEasy
…the pill did not solve anything that abstinence did not already solve.
Well, sure, but you are dealing with humans here. Put me in a room with a willing naked comely female… and use your imagination.
The anticonception, as a concept, is as old as humanity itself. Some old cultures still retain knowledge about means. For instance Australian Aborigines (a certain tribe I forgotten the name of it) uses a certain plant for that purpose–it functions as “morning-after” pill. Actually, there are remnants of a subtantial body of medical knowledge amongst Aborigines. They for instance utilized a blood transfusion, through a straw that was obtained for a certain type of grass. There were no issue with blood types, because their elaborate matrilineal relationship scheme stipulated who can give blood to whom (and who can have children with whom). From the POV of uninformed observer the relationship structure would have seem as a nonsensical set of arbitrary taboos.
The sexual behavior in our time has been somehow consciously. detached from its original purpose–procreation. That does not mean this purpose does not pop into a forefront even in transformed form. It is still present in our subconscious.
How many times you’ve heard some female exclaiming: “I wanna have his children”! This is not just a specifically female thing. Man too wants to have “her” children, albeit they almost never express it in such a direct fashion. But what happens when you are on the wrong side of the gender divide?
I’ve noticed a comment from a male posted on youtube, regarding a guitarist in the clip. The guy said: “I would be even happy if he had sex with my girlfriend”!
Me: “Ah! So you want his children. But because it is not possible due to your y-chromosome, you want to use a proxy”!
Some significant hunks of that old SAGE hardware are on display at the Computer History Museum, refer to:
http://www.computerhistory.org/
This is easily the best computer museum on the planet. One of their center piece attractions is a –working– IBM/1620 computer. A million years ago, I first learned to program FORTRAN, assembly language (SPS) and machine language on an IBM/1620. They have a bunch of other old relics that I find bittersweet to see in a museum, e.g. an IBM/360, Cray-1, Cray-YMP, etc. These machines were all milestones to my career and at one time seemed utterly futuristic. To see these old friends displayed in the museum like a pickled coelacanth is very disturbing. To add insult to injury, if the museum minders hear me commenting to friends or relatives about the different exhibits, they try to hire me as a museum docent. I am no where near ready to retire, thank you very much!
It’s still a nice museum. I just have to learn to keep my mouth shut while visiting the place.
NahnCee — false choice. The Pill liberated women (along with cheap, reliable condoms manufactured on industrial scales like razor blades) in concert with anonymous urban living to act on their desires unconstrained by social mores and customs.
You can have female sexual liberation, or the nuclear family. Choose.
And society has chosen the former over the latter. The illegitimacy rate among US Blacks is 70% nationally and 90% in the urban core, among Whites it is 41%, and among the Brits it is over 50%.
“Family” is now a single mother, with a kids from various fathers, who have predictably zero investment or interest in either the mother or kid. The kind of effort put together by NORAD is impossible now, because status games and competition for women without boundaries and rules inhibits long-term male cooperation, and indeed more and more Western society is looking like places where “soft” polygamy and female-run single mother societies exist. West and South Africa, parts of Asia, the US Inner City, the British underclass, that is the future of the West.
You miss the point about Afghan society. Women are either chattel, or round-robin sexual playthings, to men who don’t have monogamous nuclear family ties to women. It’s inevitable. Just as the questions “why do they hate us so?” are female-oriented. Male oriented questions center around how most quickly the enemy can be destroyed. Not social status (women are very bad at dealing with violence, in the main). Men only care about women and treat them decently when they have stakes in doing so. This is the lesson of history and other societies. Preaching and moralizing do no good, and besides feminists are completely in agreement with oppression of women in Muslim polygamist societies, for obvious reasons.
It’s quite true that fairly repressive attitudes towards women’s roles in society, marriage, family, and so on have been thrown off. But everything has it’s price, and the price has been no zilch nada zero investment by most men in most women, with the dissolution of the nuclear family.
This is the great change. This is when the music died. When families changed from the nuclear version to one headed by a single mother. It’s not going to change. It’s too pervasive. But it has real costs and it’s simplistic to ignore them.
I’m a bit confused by the machinations of lesbian schizophrenia evident in a the “Many Faces of Teresita”, but it seemed reading Michelle Renee’s blog that she was a new member of the Lesbian Posse. A 25 year old vs. a 45 year old. Whatever.
Michelle boasted of growing up in a household with two teachers parenting and no mention of
religion. Interestingly, this Christmas my oldest who grew up in a conservative Christian home came home full of east coast narcissistic liberalism. So I guess parentful world view goes so far. Well I plan on praising the Lord and keeping my powder dry in 2009. Happy New Year.
Whiskey Do you read George Gilder’s “Men and Marriage”? Pretty much makes your points.
Make that parental world view in #52
Roundhouse?
My guess was “Big Noise.” I recall that it seemed to be appropriate. The all clear was “Fast Fade” which was another good name.
The only place I saw these listed was on an old poster in an eternally unlighted section of a test facility at Tinker AFB, OK. If you opened the door you could just make out the poster. Shucks, it is probably still there.
Paul M: The problem with anything you use to knock down a jumbo jet is that if it hits anywhere in a populated area it is going to cause severe damage, even without hitting the intended target. You would have to all but vaporize it to avoid loss of life on the ground, and that is very hard to do with the armament carried by current fighters. Now if we had the 104 2.75 in unguided rockets of the F-94 that might do it, but current military thinking is that once you badly damage a military bomber the crew is going to focus on stepping outside to discuss the situation as soon as possible. But terrorists don’t have the option or desire to take that approach.
Of course the masses of unguided rockets carried by the F-86D, F-89, and F-94 fighters guided by the SAGE system was based on a lack of guided missiles as well as the need to do as much damage to nuclear armed bombers as possible. And the accuracy limitations of the system.
Anyone ever see the radar scope of an F-102? When it locked on the target it lit up exactly like the scopes on the original Battlestar Galactica fighters. Cool as hell.
Paul Milenkovic asks about the probability of a successful first strike. In order to be successful, a first strike must destroy such a high percentage of the opposing country’s nuclear retaliatory capability that they realize their cities would be hostage to any response and they negotiate a political surrender. Since the US and Russia have slashed their arsenals far below what is required to accomplish this, no first strike by either side can be successful.
This leaves only the retaliatory second-strike option for both sides, and the targets are not military but the industrial base. Detroit has pretty much nuked itself over the years, Russia need only to wait for the bailout of the UAW to fail. But Boeing and the “Little Eight” plants all across the South will be targets, lest Nissan and Toyota retool and produce tanks.
Do we have to worry? Probably not. Moscow was going to spend 4 trillion rubles on upgrading its army in 2009-11. But if the ruble collapses they have to spend trillions more. Russia also has plans to commission 70 new strategic nuclear missiles, acquire 14 naval vessels, 48 combat jets, more than 60 military helicopters and almost 300 tanks over the next three years. Maybe all this hardware will be made of edible materials and the Russian people can take a big bite.
@ 51. whiskey
But everything has it’s price, and the price has been no zilch nada zero investment by most men in most women, with the dissolution of the nuclear family.
Which — the dissolution of the nuclear family — has been the goal of gramscian evolution all along. To create conditions, structural and economic, so that the state can take over the business of raising children. Or rather to create conditions where it is essentially begged to take over. The raising is a small price to be paid for the wonderful opportunity to form a custom tailored state bot, obedient and unquestioning, with a collective minds set, a bot that would be given according to bot’s needs (defined by the government) and work as a slave according to bot’s ability (again defined by state).
Won’t work. That is, it would work to a degree, with a sizable figure of fractured personalities (that would present antisocial behavioral deviations) and a segment of individuals that would simply override the programming because of their ability to discern, analyze and reverse external manipulations.
Charles: Love @9 – Big problems with @5. Come and sit at my electrical dispatch desk out west or indicate a desire for a more intensive and educational exchange of e-mails to inform you of the problems with your infatuation with renewable energy. Particularly the ~ $1 trillion investment in grid infrastructure required to tie enough renewables together to enable them to even count as reliable capacity. Further, your ideas give politicians
even more control over the grid.
@49:twoxfour, Put you in a room with a sexy female and you would do what? Rape her? No insult intended, I just think you missed my point. I was disagreeing with a response to a female (I believe) saying only the pill kept women from being pregnant and able to choose a career. My point was she could choose NOT to become pregnant until she wished. I think Whiskey has it right in choose one or the other, but they of course want it all. That is where it all goes pear shaped.
58. weSwinger:
Charles: Love @9 – Big problems with @5. Come and sit at my electrical dispatch desk out west or indicate a desire for a more intensive and educational exchange of e-mails to inform you of the problems with your infatuation with renewable energy. Particularly the ~ $1 trillion investment in grid infrastructure required to tie enough renewables together to enable them to even count as reliable capacity.
……………………
The numbers I’ve seen so far for the grid are 15-150 billion. Obama people are currently claiming that they’re not getting enough green projects.
I think T Boone Pickens is right. The quickest way to slash 25% off US demand for oil is to convert US trucks over to gas. That will give time for other renewables.
I think most of the borrowed money that obama spends will be poured down the toilet. It won’t do anything. The grid however, will do something. But I don’t think its fully understood.
I do know however, that the Hoover dam built by the Dept of Interior Bureau of Reclamation in 1932–is currently turning a profit for the government. But likely the time to profitability for the hoover dam was and remains likely far outside the range of most private companies. That dam sells both power and water.
This power and water combination is something that people in the water industry have seen repeated over and over again–from water pumped into wells to extract oil–to waste heat from coal plants used to flash distill salt water. Somehow power and water projects go together. The new extended dynamic grid would enable new sources of both power and water.
In this week’s post I discuss the geothermal rush out west.
@59. SpeakEasy:
What part of “willing” you did not understand?
@ 59. SpeakEasy
And no, did not miss your point. Abstinence may be one of the methods to prevent unwanted pregnancy, but you need to take into an account that humans are sexual critters. For you abstinence may be easy. For me… yes, I can handle that too, but it may require an iron will. I simply can’t imagine if I had a relationship with a female that I would abstain from sex. Does not mean that I would not use different methods to plan for and accomodate a consent on conception.
RE: Abstinence as a form of birth control. Progressives believe in the perfectibility of man – from the inside out – man can become less racist, less sexist, less bigoted, less stupid, if he just has the proper education and a house. Conservatives believe in the perfectibility of institutions – from the outside in, built around the imperfect creature that is man to accommodate, maybe mitigate, his worst efforts. Faith in abstinence follows logically from the Progressive philosophy. Contraception is an external “fix” that follows directly from Conservative philosophy.
a segment of individuals that would simply override the programming because of their ability to discern, analyze and reverse external manipulations – twobyfour
Those same individuals will override the dissolution of traditional family structures. I used to lament the absence of critical thinking instruction in academia. Now I believe it is genetic behavior, not learned, as anybody with a “twobyfour” handle should be able to attest. Sometimes the only tool just ain’t enough.
I agree with Charles that I agree with Boone Pickens. That this is a dumb-as-dirt Congress. I have never said that before. The confluence of AGW with the pitiful behavior of scientists who get a whiff of power for the first time (I used to think scientists were a cut above, another write-off to my recent education), with the pitiful Kyoto carbon “punishments” (something funny happened on the way to the Kyoto Quorem), with the pitiful financial crisis that regulation and Congressional reaction could have contained (cutting 2000 points from the DJIA collapse (Buddy’s SWAG but it sounds about right)), coupled with the pitiful belief that all these unemployed service workers are going to find life nirvana and such pouring hot asphalt in the Nevada desert (Wynn wins again).
It didn’t have to be this bad. Is my only point. If just one institution had it’s head above water.
Prediction for 2009: That DJIA 2000 points (give or take 500) cut by manipulation/speculation will “suddenly” return and we’ll get a “miraculous” “V-shaped” rebound and we’ll be back in Kansas again betting the house.
the worst part of the make work projects will be that they’ll be done by illegals who will take their spare cash and send it to Mexico and other points south.
duh?
The USA is spending almost a Billion $$$ less a day on gasoline,
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/twip/twip_gasoline.html
In July gasoline consumption reached a 9,375,000 barrels a day or 393,750,000 gallons a day at $4.062/gallon.
The last average shown in December is 8,998,000 barrels a day or 377,916,000 gallons a day at $1.653/gallon.
$974.7 million.
It is quite a chunk of change.
@ 63. slade:
RE: Abstinence as a form of birth control. Progressives believe in the perfectibility of man – from the inside out – man can become less racist, less sexist, less bigoted, less stupid, if he just has the proper education and a house. Conservatives believe in the perfectibility of institutions – from the outside in, built around the imperfect creature that is man to accommodate, maybe mitigate, his worst efforts. Faith in abstinence follows logically from the Progressive philosophy. Contraception is an external “fix” that follows directly from Conservative philosophy.
Darn! I think that progressives [regressives] and conservatives substantially messed up your neatly defined logical paths!
Both political creeds (and in betweens) contain a whole spectrum of opinions from abstinence to contraception.
Nothing tidy or particularly ideological about my world twobyfour. I take offense at the quickness to condemn a modern advance that increases opportunity, but extracts a price out of a traditional structure. As both sides, like to say, “it’s the Opportunity Stupid” – not the Equality. But opportunity at what cost? Fewer like to say. As a poster wrote above or elsewhere, a failure of progressive thought is that all change is free of cost. (I would add conservative thought as well if you include free market economics which is the driver of Change.) Out problem now is that we haven’t got everything valued by market metrics – the family as part of The Commons – no dollar sign on that yet.
I don’t find the decline of the family argument that rises on occasion on this board to be persuasive.
Either at the extremes or anywhere along the spectrum.
But it’s not a hill I will stand on at this point or in this forum. Just an opinion that duplicity underlies persistence of the theme.
Now I believe it is genetic behavior, not learned, as anybody with a “twobyfour” handle should be able to attest. Sometimes the only tool just ain’t enough.
Agreed, with a clause that we don’t have much clue what genetics really is or how it really works, yet. The likelihood is that it is a multidimensional structure, with DNA being a part that relates to biological processes more or less… albeit there seems to be several levels of keys involved in its chain.
Despite our efforts to modify, we follow the bell curve distribution–it seems to be a fundamental law of nature, no matter how you slice it. The trend is towards learned behavior and patterns, but there is a buffer, a contingency segment, just in case. On the opposite side, there are ubersheep.
I served as an Air Force officer at the SAGE blockhouse in Syracuse during the late Sixties. The ash trays built into the consoles were used by nearly everybody. The explanation for the lack of coffee cup holders is the constantly reinforced strong prohibition on putting coffee anywhere near electronic equipment. You just did not do it.