Monday, May 23, 2011

Something To Think Aout

This, from Harper's Maazine(1920), in a magazine article titled 'Cargoes Through The Clouds':


Lord Northcliffe, whose offer of a $50,000 prize was one of the stimuli of the men who undertook to fly across the Atlantic last spring, was quick to see the possibilities of closer Anglo-American relations which the flight in sixteen hours of Alcock and Brown from Newfoundland to Ireland opened up. "A warning to cable monopolists," he termed the feat, adding that the voyage was quicker than the average time of press messages in 1919. "I look forward with certainty," he said, "to the time when the London morning newspapers will be selling in New York in the evening, allowing for the difference between British and American time, and vice versa in regard to the New York evening newspapers reaching London the next day. Then we shall no longer suffer from the danger of garbled quotations due to telegraphic compression. Then, too, the American and British peoples will understand each other better, as they are brought into closer daily touch."


AmaAmazing
Amazing, isn't it, that 90 years later, we have a similar effect between texting, chatspeak and twitters.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Something that drives me nuts...

Reading how people don't like leather, sheepskin, goatskin, etc. drives me nuts. First, I'm not a vegetarian nor vegan, second, I have no problem with skins that come from animals that are food. I only oppose those skins/furs that are hunted/raised only for the skin/fur. In the same vein, I think that sport hunters that don't eat their kill are idiots. Now, it's one thing to kill an animal infected with a terminal disease that you won't eat, but otherwise, you don't kill what you won't eat. Oh, as for rabbit skin, rabbit stew is what's for easter dinner ... with boiled eggs on the side. Maybe you don't want to use leather/fur or eat meat, but don't tell me that I can't. It's about basic freedom of choice.