1,177 sailors and officers perished aboard the Arizona. To this day, most of them are still there.
Today, seventy years later, there are approximately six thousand who survived the Pearl Harbor attack who are still among us.
Remembering them on this 70th anniversary, as well as those who died that day and those who have passed on since.
And she doesn't exist outside of a hard drive.
Good friend and fellow blogger Lee Shelton was the first to draw my attention to the intriguing but also unsettling story of Aimi Eguchi: a computer-generated composite of six different girls, who until now had fooled many people into believing she was a real flesh and blood person...
Click here for more about Aimi Eguchi's "biography".
I'm telling you people here and now: one of these days, this is going to be an American politician who "runs" for office. Whether or not it wins is a commentary that I shall leave as an exercise for the reader...
The laboratory sample is even labeled... may the Lord forgive me for ever having to write this... "SHIT BURGER".
Darn. This stuff makes Soylent Green sound downright palatable!
And the coastline of Japan has been permanently moved nearly 2 and a half meters.
Once again, I am reminded about how lacking in humility we are in regard to the world we live upon.
Try to think about the forces required to move something as big as the entire Earth by ten inches. Just ten inches.
In the first year of this blog's operation, after the 2004 Indonesia earthquake/tsunami, I posted an excerpt from Jurassic Park (the super-incredible novel not the less-than-satisfying movie). It's the scene toward the end where Ian Malcolm is telling Hammond about how the Earth cannot be destroyed. It's perhaps worth reading again, and pondering.
8.9 Richter... sheesh. I can't begin to imagine what it must be like to experience something like that.
Thoughts and prayers going out this morning to our friends in Japan. And if you can, tune in to the television coverage going on right now. This is history in the making.
EDIT 2:55 a.m. EST: This blog has lots of readers in Hawaii (yeah hey to you too Danny :-). Now hearing that a tsunami warning has been issued and that you guys are due to get hit by the heavy end of the hammer around 3:00 a.m. Hawaiian local time this morning.
Got you guys in prayer especially. Please, be safe.
Meanwhile, our friends in Japan have just unloaded something just as eyeball-blowing spectacular: a new trailer for the Space Battleship Yamato (better known as Star Blazers on this side of the pond) live action movie! There was a teaser released earlier this year, but this one shows us much more.
One thing I'm worried about: how is the story from Season 1 of the animated series going to be compressed into one motion picture? Maybe Space Battleship Yamato/Star Blazers could become a live-action TV adaptation with modern technology. Perhaps on HBO? Then they wouldn't have to pretend that Dr. Sane was drunk on "spring water", heh-heh...
Anyhoo, what glorious eye candy awaits us from the Land of the Rising Sun! Can't wait to see this.
And as much as 'twould be nice to have some respite after the past several weeks of work that went into that, there's always something new afoot for The Knight Shift's eclectic proprietor.
Been busy the past few days with... work, on... stuff. Along with... new ummm, "equipment" that will soon be employed toward, errr... "projects". Got to do some field testing with it this week and so far I'm more than a little pleased with the investment :-)
Might be worth noting here that my blogging may be sparse during the next few weeks as I and others are engaged in numerous endeavors. When I am here though, I'll do my best to make it worth your precious time. And to make up for the last few days' absence I'll share this with you: a video from Japan, advertising something that I haven't a clue what it is...
Whatever they're selling, I'd buy it!
Well, this ain't the flaming destruction of a space vessel for once. This is the atmospheric re-entry of the HAYABUSA Asteroid Explorer mission, videoed from a NASA DC-8 over Australia. The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched HAYABUSA in 2003. A few years later it landed on the asteroid Itokawa. Then HAYABUSA scooped up some samples and made the five-year journey back to Earth, using a high-tech ion engine to return its precious cargo.
The capsule containing the asteroid samples has been located at its calculated arrival point in western Australia (gotta love mathematics aye?). And soon the asteroid rocks and dust will be in laboratories undergoing analysis.
That is about as successful a space mission as I have ever heard of in any recent memory. Congrats to JAXA and the HAYABUSA crew on a job well done!
That looks AWESOME!! Heck it's exactly like the cartoon! Right down to a perfect-looking Captain Avatar and that mechanism on the Wave Motion Gun.
It comes out sometime this year. Hopefully there'll be an English-dubbed version soon afterward :-)
But what of the fifth Japanese mini-sub?
There's been evidence for decades - particularly an intercepted radio transmission from the day after the ambush reporting on the success of the mini-sub - but no hard proof of the role it might have played. Historians have debated it for years.
But today history has one less mystery. The scuttled remains of the fifth Japanese mini-sub have been found three miles south of Pearl Harbor, its 800-pound torpedoes emptied and likely fired at the battleships West Virginia and Oklahoma and perhaps causing enough damage for the latter to capsize in in one of the most iconic destructive acts of the raid.
Amazing, isn't it? That even today, there are still things we don't know about World War II that every so often finally come to light.
Even as we remember those who fought and served and even perished in this most terrible of conflicts, let us pray that there may never again be such an occasion for enigma.
Interestingly, many if not most of these same critics defended George W. Bush when in April 2008 (when he was still President) Bush not only held hands with but also gave a big fat slobbering fat kiss right on the lips to the visiting king of Saudi Arabia...
Bush's supporters at the time claimed that Bush was just "following protocol", exactly as Obama's defenders are doing now.
Me? I can't see a difference between what either of these two Presidents have done. And regardless of who's doing it, it sickens me to no end.
If either Bush or Obama had acted like this as private citizens, that would have been their right. But Bush and now Obama, as elected head of state of the United States of America, each ceremoniously capitulated their nation to a foreign sovereign power. This ain't about our home-grown assumption that the United States is "the greatest" country on Earth and everything with our understanding that in the roll call of nations ours is equal - no more and no less - to any other.
That's not a small matter, folks. And I can't see how it can be defended.
A little over a hundred and fifty years ago in 1859, John E. Ward arrived in China. Ward, a proud native of Georgia and former mayor of Savannah, had been dispatched by President James Buchanan to begin trade relations with China in accordance with the Treaty of Tientsin. But before such could happen Ward would have to come to Peking: a place that no American had been allowed to enter. Ward was allowed to proceed but on every step of the journey he asserted his native land as equal to China and not as a vassal state, as the Russians and the British and everyone else had done according to "diplomacy". The final act of "insolence" on the part of this American "barbarian" was his refusal to kow-tow: a low bow before the Emperor.
John E. Ward refused to bow. The representatives of the Emperor told Ward that he must bow not only for purposes of diplomacy but out of respect for the land's religion.
The reason Ward gave the Chinese: "I kneel only to God and woman."
True to his word, Ward did not bow to the Emperor of China. He never got the audience with the Emperor that he had been sent to have, but Ward wasn't fazed. He still delivered his letter about the treaty (to a minor official) and returned to America, his pride upheld... and China beginning to respect "the Country of the Flowery Flag". You can read more about John E. Ward at AmericanHeritage.com.
Y'know, I can't even begin to imagine either Bush or Obama getting up the nerve to think of something as brazenly principled as "I kneel only to God and woman." In the chronicle of American statesmanship, John E. Ward is certainly the greater man than our two or three or four most recent Presidents of the United States.
And if we had men (and women) of Ward's caliber and character, this nation would no doubt have more respect and standing among the countries of the world today.
I've already shared with y'all some Japanese prank videos. But this next one is definitely over-the-edge darkly hilarious: a Japanese hidden camera "reality" television show fakes a sniper attack on an unsuspecting contestant. Panic Face King is kinda like Candid Camera meets Scare Tactics.
Watch the mayhem! And this is the sort of thing that, for once, you don't need to worry about a translation :-)
The 24 countdown timer sound effect is a particularly nice touch :-P
"If the Chinese and Japanese stop buying our bonds, we could easily see [inflation] go to 15 to 20 percent," he said. "It's not a question of the economy. It's a question of who will lend us the money if they don't. Imagine us getting ourselves in a situation where we're totally dependent on those two countries. It's crazy."Mash down here for more observations from Mr. Robertson.(snip)
"We're in for some real rough sledding," he said. "I really do think the recession is at least temporarily over. But we haven't addressed so many of our problems and we are borrowing so much money that we can't possibly pay it back, unless the Chinese and Japanese buy our bonds."
I'm still wog-boggled about the idea of basing a national economy, even partially, on the selling of that country's debt.
How did that happen?
Nothing good can possibly come of it.
This is the opening shot of the third-from-last scene of Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. This shot and the ensuing dialogue between Obi-Wan Kenobi, Mace Windu and Yoda are dominated by a brilliant and beautiful sunset, which poignantly echoes the darkness that is now falling across the galaxy...
According to the original online annotations for the Star Wars Episode II DVD on StarWars.com, the background plate in this scene was a photograph made of the Tokyo skyline at sunset.
And this is a photograph that was taken on September 11th, 2001.
If you figure the time zone difference, the dominant element of this pivotal scene in the Star Wars saga was taken from the real world, at about the very same moment that New York City was coming under attack thousands of miles away.
Then again, maybe I don't need to come up with words. Some things... just seem to speak plenty enough on their own.
You know what's starting to impress me already about Watchmen? It's all the details that went into such a broad paintbrush for this, the 1985 of a world that is just slightly different from ours. Like the TV showing Nixon getting elected for a third term, and the American fighter jets doing that "eat me" flyover of Moscow as Fidel Castro and the Politburo members watch helplessly.
This could be the biggest movie of 2009. And it's already coming out on March 6th! And if I've got a clear schedule that day, I'm probably going to see it three times, 'cuz I've waited almost twenty years for this movie to be made :-)
