My interpretation was that he was talking about a great circle. Of course, maintaining a heading of 90 degrees would just take him around at a line of latitude parallel to the equator instead of a great circle.
He also pronounces it that way. He pronounces his own name with the first syllable stressed and the T sounded. The name pronounced with the stress on the second syllable and the T silent isn’t his name; it’s the name of the character that he portrays on his show.
I thought they were talking about magnetic compass East which gets less reliable the further you travel especially if you just point yourself in that direction at the start and make no corrections along the way.
Between “geographically, straight lines aren’t really straight because the Earth isn’t flat” and “if you go around the world your calendar date won’t agree with the date back at home”, early oceanic exploration sounds almost like a foray into the mysteries of General Relativity.
Robert Vicino, the entrepreneur behind Vivos xPoint (the survival bunker complex in South Dakota) was also responsible for putting a giant inflatable King Kong on the Empire State Building in 1983 as a 50th anniversary promotional stunt.
They certainly DID want to show off the Technicolor. Watch any movie from the late 1930s through 1950 and you can see they were obsessed with showing off that color. They hired Technicolor specialists to make sure they got the best colors possible. They set up bright colors and contrasting ones. Look at Snow White or Gone with the Wind or the 1940 Thief of Bagdad or Anchors Aweigh (with its fantasy dance sequence with Gene Kelly and Jerry the Mouse). . Lucille Ball found herself much in demand as “Technicolor Tessie” because of her bright red hair and green eyes.
I don’t know any version of Wizard of Oz that uses the green spectacles, by the way. It’s easier and more satisfying to make the whole town green.
TIL that Beck (the Californian musician) is the grandson of a Fluxus artist – that loose, avant-garde group (many media, most notably performance art) that included Yoko Ono.
I’ve known that for a long time, and I think he kinda works in that tradition with his absurdist lyrics.
Another fact about Beck: he’s a longtime scientologist.
True.
Ouch - that sucks.
He was raised in a Scientologist household and has recently denied he actually is one. I think most of us can relate to that situation.
Indeed.
Another gem I just learned from the History of Rock in 500 Songs podcast:
In 1975 the British “comedian” Charlie (My Boomerang Won’t Come Back) Drake released a song You Never Know. It was written by Peter Gabriel and the musicians on the track included him, Robert Fripp, Brian Eno, Phil Collins, Sandy Denny, and Keith Tippett.
Despite which it is ear-stabbingly awful.
TIL that Bill Gates is funding a mosquito breeding facility in Medellín, Colombia that produces 30 million mosquitoes a week.
The mosquitoes being produced in this factory carry bacteria called Wolbachia that block them from transmitting dengue and other viruses, such as Zika, chikungunya and yellow fever, to humans. By releasing them to reproduce with wild mosquitoes, they spread the bacteria, reducing virus transmission and protecting millions of people from illnesses.
Nominative determinism:
TIL that the CEO of Hammer Films, who specialise in horror movies and have just released some scenes from Dracula previously deemed too gruesome to be shown, is… a Mr. Gore.
Similarly, the observatory in the appropriately named suburb of Observatory in Cape Town, sends a message - these days electronic, but formerly semaphore, passed over a series of small military installations - in order for the noon gun to be fired above the harbour.
It used to be in order to synchronize shipboard clocks, to ensure longitude/latitude navigation calculations were accurate.
Now it is just a tourist attraction, but still useful if you work in the city centre as “lunch break time”…
The cardboard sleeve on takeout coffee cups is called a zarf.
In November, the University of Copenhagen announced the discovery of three new species of arboreal toad in Africa which give birth to toadlets, bypassing the egg laying and tadpole stages.
From the Wikipedia article on von Blucher (the Napoleonic era field marshal)
“The courage of the Prussian leader was undiminished, though, and his victory against the vastly outnumbered French, at Laon (9 and 10 March [1814]) practically decided the fate of the campaign. However, his health had been severely affected by the strains of the previous two months, and he now suffered a breakdown, during which he lost his sight and suffered a delusion that a Frenchman had impregnated him with an elephant.”
von NEEEEIIIIGGHHHH!!
I received an e-mail this morning announcing that May is Lyme Disease Awareness Month!
From the e-mail:
Over 89,000 cases of Lyme disease were reported to the CDC in 2023. However, researchers believe this number does not include suspected and treated cases of Lyme disease and that the actual annual case count is closer to 476,000. Either way, Lyme disease is the most common tick-borne illness in the United States.
In the United States, Lyme disease is caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi and, rarely, Borrelia mayonii, which is transmitted to humans through the bite of infected Ixodes ticks. Most cases of Lyme disease can be treated successfully with a few weeks of antibiotics. If left untreated, however, infection can spread to joints, the heart, and the nervous system.
I can’t believe that they waited until May 29 to announce this.