29 March 2013
Environment for the day
Unlikely vacation spot
History for the day
Rico says that we still haven't turned out that 'light at the end of the tunnel'...
28 March 2013
Transformed
A new performing arts charter high school says it has sealed a deal to open in the fall at GlaxoSmithKline's former North American headquarters at 16th and Vine Streets.
Under terms that will be announced soon, a nonprofit associated with the Philadelphia Performing Arts Charter School has agreed to buy the curving, eight-story building for $29 million for the String Theory High School for the Arts and Sciences. It will be the first charter high school in the city focused on the performing arts.
The nonprofit, DeMedici Corporation II, expects to finance the property with tax-exempt bonds from the Philadelphia Authority for Industrial Development (PAID), according to Mary D'Anella, spokeswoman for String Theory Schools, which manages the charter.
"It's the most exciting high school this city has opened in a generation," said Angela Corosanite, chief executive officer of the nonprofit String Theory, and founder of it and the Philadelphia Performing Arts Charter School.
The charter high school will open in the fall with 350 ninth graders and add a grade each year until fourteen hundred ninth through twelfth graders are enrolled in 2016-17.
The building, at Three Franklin Plaza, is owned and operated by Liberty Property Trust. Officials from the real estate development trust in Malvern were trying to confirm that a sales agreement had been reached with DeMedici II.
Records from the Pennsylvania Department of State show DeMedici II was incorporated as a nonprofit in 2011 solely to support the performing arts charter.
William P. Hankowsky, chairman, president, and CEO of Liberty, is a managing director of Interstate General Media, publisher of The Inquirer.
John Grady, president of Philadelphia Industrial Development Corp., which administers PAID's tax-exempt bond program, could not be reached for comment.
String Theory High will not only focus on the arts, but also on science and technology.
D'Anella said plans call for making upgrades of between ten and twelve million dollars to the 225,000-square-foot building, to create a theater, performing arts studios, science labs, television and motion-capture studios, and an automotive engineering lab.
Students will have opportunities to choose from seven areas of study: vocal music; instrumental music; ballet; theater, television, and broadcast arts; foreign languages; digital design and communication arts; and innovations in science and technology.
Glaxo has moved its headquarters from the Franklin Plaza site to a new building in the Navy Yard.
Last summer, the School Reform Commission gave Philadelphia Performing Arts Charter permission to expand to add a high school. The charter, which opened in 2000, has 1,075 K-8 students in two buildings on South Broad Street.
D'Anella said the 72 eighth graders at that elementary charter had been encouraged to apply to the charter high school and many had. She said students from across the city can apply for ninth-grade spots. The application deadline is 30 April. The charter will hold a lottery to select students 1 May . She said charter officials believe the high school's Center City location will make it accessible to students from across the district.
The curriculum of the elementary charter school blends academic subjects with vocal, instrumental, and ballet lessons.
Another nonprofit, the DeMedici Corp., owns and leases the facilities for the K-8 charter.
As a result of the elementary charter's strong academics, the SRC last year chose String Theory to convert the former Edmunds School in Frankford into a Renaissance charter school. Under String Theory's management, the Frankford school is known as the Philadelphia Charter School for the Arts and Sciences at H.R. Edmunds. It has a thousand K-8 students.
Rico says he used to work in the building in the photo...
Nice Judds
So much for the Ashley Judd-Mitch McConnell showdown. The actress-turned-activist announced this evening in a series of posts on Twitter that she won't be jumping in the race to unseat the current top Republican in the Senate:"Regretfully, I am currently unable to consider a campaign for the Senate: I have spoken to so many Kentuckians over these last few months who expressed their desire for a fighter for the people & new leader. While that won't be me at this time, I will continue to work as hard as I can to ensure the needs of Kentucky families are met by returning this Senate seat to whom it rightfully belongs: the people & their needs, dreams, and great potential. Thanks for even considering me as that person & know how much I love our Commonwealth. Thank you!"Judd had seemingly been inching closer and closer to launching her campaign in recent weeks and, according to a Huffington Post report from earlier this month, was leaning toward making things official in early May.
Some GOP insiders had expressed optimism that they'd be able to turn Judd into "the liberal Democrat version of Todd Akin", thanks to her ties to Hollywood and outspoken liberal positions on things like the environment and social issues (a tough sell in Kentucky's coal country, but certainly less controversial topics than "legitimate rape", we should point out). Still, given the GOP's extensive preemptive attacks on Judd, it was pretty clear they viewed her as a formidable challenger to McConnell, no doubt in large part due to her perceived ability to garner national media attention and to bring in large amounts of cash from outside of the state.
With Judd stepping aside, the new front-runner to challenge McConnell is now Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes.
Rico says too bad; she'd have livened up the place...
Crime for the day
Connecticut police have released the latest batch of documents relating to the Newtown school shooting: search warrants that provide the latest glimpse into the home life of Adam Lanza, but paint an unclear picture of what drove him to kill twenty first graders and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary before taking his own life.
Reporters are still digging through the documents, but among the early takeaways:According to the Hartford Courant: "Investigators found a gun safe belonging to Nancy Lanza, the shooter's mother, open and with no evidence that it had been broken into. Adam Lanza shot and killed his mother at their home before going on his rampage at the school, police have said. Police found three photographs of a dead person covered in plastic and blood. The warrants do not indicate whether authorities know the identity of the person. They confiscated a military-style uniform from Adam Lanza's bedroom, the warrants indicate."
According to CNN, 'investigators found more than sixteen hundred rounds of ammunition in the house'.
According to The Associated Press: "Investigators found a holiday card containing a check made out to Lanza for the purchase of a firearm, authored by his mother, Nancy Lanza. Adam Lanza shot and killed his mother in their Newtown home before driving to the school to carry out the massacre."
According to Yahoo! News: "In addition to several guns inside the home, police also recovered three samurai swords and long pole with a blade on one side and a spear on the other. Inside the car the shooter drove to the school, officers recovered a twelve-gauge shotgun and two magazines containing seventy rounds of ammunition, the documents show."
According to NBC News: "Also recovered were a National Rifle Association certificate, seven of Lanza’s journals, drawings that he made, and books, including an NRA guide to the basics of pistol shooting, authorities said. Other books included Look at Me: My Life with Asperger’s and Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Mind of an Autistic Savant. Among the other items seized were a holiday card containing a check from his mother to buy a firearm, an article from The New York Times about a school shooting at Northern Illinois University, and three photographs of what appeared to be a dead person covered with plastic and blood."
According to ABC News: "In addition, police discovered personal notes, memoirs, and thoughts collected by Lanza. There were also newspaper clippings, drawings, and medical bills police have been scrutinizing to develop a psychological profile of the gunman."
According to The New York Times: "The day of the Newtown shooting, agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation interviewed a person who said Lanza rarely left his home. The person, whose name is redacted, considered Lanza to be a 'shut-in and an avid gamer who plays Call of Duty, amongst other games', a law enforcement affidavit accompanying the warrants stated."
According to NBC News: "Adam Lanza fired 155 bullets in less than five minutes on the day he killed twenty children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the chief prosecutor investigating the massacre said. The total included 154 fired from a Bushmaster .223-model rifle and a final bullet, fired from a Glock 10mm handgun, that Lanza used to take his own life, said Stephen Sedensky, the chief prosecutor investigating the shooting."
Rico says this is yet another backwards crime, where he should've shot himself first...
Not a bad place to end up
Phil Plait has a Slate article about the end of some space voyagers:
Rico says ain't science fun?
The twin Grail probes were sent into orbit around the Moon in the last days of 2011, designed to use gravity itself to measure the Moon’s interior composition and structure. On 17 December 2012 they were sent plummeting to the surface after completing their major objectives, slamming into the ground near the Moon’s north pole.
Another mission, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, was able to spot the impact sites where the two spacecraft met their doom, and you can see them in these before-and-after shots:
The impact sites of the twin Grail spacecraft. The area before the impact is above, and after the impacts below (I brightened those images a bit to make it easier to see). Image credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University.
On the left, stacked vertically, is where Grail A (nicknamed Ebb) hit, and on the right is Grail B (Flow). As you can see in the bottom images, there are dust plumes that fanned out over the surface that weren’t there before. Note the scale; each image is about two hundred meters across, twice the length of a football field. That may sound big, but the Moon has a lot of crater-saturated real estate. It’s amazing they found these sites.
Above is a wider view of the impact site, showing where they hit: the base of a lunar massif. They actually hit near the base of a massif, or long mountain, on the south-facing bank, just a couple of thousand meters apart— they were flying together in the same orbit, to help measure the change in gravity due to changes in density of the lunar material beneath them. The lower they flew, the better their measurements, so in the end their orbits were lowered to just a few kilometers above the Moon. The final impact was placed at the north pole to avoid any possible contamination of historical spots like the Apollo landings.
The two spacecraft each approached the surface at one mile per second— twice as fast as a rifle bullet— moving south to north. Note the excavated material fanned out to the north as you’d expect from a low-angle impact. The irregular distribution is unusual though: each made craters about five meters across. And there’s another surprise, too: the ejected material is dark. Usually, dust blown out by impacts is lighter in color than the surrounding material, eventually darkening over the eons as it gets zapped by cosmic radiation and whacked by micrometeorite impacts (like, for example, the rays around the relative young impact crater Tycho). It’s not clear why there’s darker material under the surface where the impacts were.
Even in death, Grail was trying to teach us something about the Moon.
Controlled impacts are common in planetary exploration when missions are at their ends. Engineers and scientists do try to squeeze out every last drop of information they can in situations like that, which I think is fine, and even noble. We should all do so well in our own last moments.
Rico says ain't science fun?
Good news, for once
Jenny Trinitapoli and Alexander Weinreb have a Slate article about AIDS:
Rico says such stories do need to be told, and he's trying to help... (But 'Gates dollars'? Who knew he was famous for that, too?)
The latest news on AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, the epidemic’s epicenter, is good. New HIV infections have declined by 25 percent since 2001, AIDS related deaths have decreased by 32 percent over the past 6 years, and there are expanded options for testing and treatment. After decades of doom-and-gloom news about AIDS in Africa, optimism is finally in the air.
What’s behind this positive turn? The standard narrative attributes these recent improvements to Western engagement. The heroes are the best-known acronyms in the world of AIDS (PEPFAR, UNAIDS, WHO), the Global Fund, and a host of NGOs. Together, these organizations have waged total war against AIDS in Africa—or what looks like total war, if you compare it to efforts devoted to other diseases. They have spent tens of billions of dollars. They have mobilized legions of scientists, medical professionals, development workers, educators, television programmers, marketing specialists, and volunteers. And they have shunned, silenced, and demonized those who oppose their good work. The good news about AIDS in Africa— so this standard narrative goes— is the result of their efforts. It’s proof that, even on that dark and desperate continent, awash with ancient superstitions, hypersexuality, dangerous traditional practices, and poor leadership, AIDS cannot withstand a sustained pummeling by well-intentioned and well-financed outsiders.
This narrative contains some important elements of truth: pharmacological treatments in particular are transforming HIV from a death sentence into a manageable, chronic condition, at least for those with access to antiretrovirals. But most of the measured improvements in AIDS in Africa are actually the result of cumulative, widespread behavior change that has led to a reduction in new HIV infections. In other words, the standard narrative is wrong.
The narrative is wrong because it ignores local African responses to AIDS and characterizes religion and religious leaders as part of the problem. We have systematically studied the role of religious leaders in sub-Saharan Africa for about a decade. As a single class of people, local religious leaders sit at the very top of our list of who should receive credit for the behavior changes that have curbed the spread of HIV in Africa.
This statement may surprise or even irritate people imagining fire-and-brimstone preachers who condemn the use of condoms, push conservative messages about sex and morality, and interpret AIDS as God’s wrath. That’s not what African religious leaders have been doing— quite the contrary. Yet their story remains untold.
Approximately ninety percent of Africans participate regularly in some religious congregation, and religious leaders have been preaching about sexual morality, in particular about abstinence and fidelity. But Africa’s religious leaders began doing this before PEPFAR and Western public health authorities told them to— long before the attention of the development world turned to AIDS in Africa. What prompted their efforts? Certainly not the fact that they were, or are, getting paid to do this by foreign NGOs. Ninety percent of congregation leaders in Malawi, where we began working on AIDS in 2004, have never seen a penny from any international NGO or their programs. Rather, they started preaching and teaching and facilitating conversations about AIDS when they became overwhelmed with caregiving and burial responsibilities, and when their members— especially the women— began demanding that they do so.
Local religious messages about abstinence and faithfulness are, at their root, moral messages, but not exclusively so. For nearly two decades, religious leaders of various stripes in Malawi— a religiously diverse country with high HIV prevalence— have been offering practical messages about how to resist the temptation of beautiful women, how to prevent jealousies in polygynous households, how to discern whether a boyfriend or girlfriend will be a faithful spouse in the long run, and why withholding sex within marriage might be risky for both partners. These messages have mattered. In congregations where AIDS and sexual mortality are discussed regularly, unmarried people are more likely to report being abstinent and married individuals faithful to their spouses.
At first, we worried that reporting bias (people wanting to appear good and consistent to interviewers asking invasive questions about religion, sexual behavior, etc.) could be driving this pattern. But when tested the responses against both more subjective and more objective criteria, the story checked out: members of these congregations are less worried about AIDS (a good indicator that they aren’t exposing themselves to much risk), and they’re less likely to test positive for HIV Far from pushing fire-and-brimstone doctrine, religious messages about abstinence and faithfulness have been pragmatic and effective. They have reduced the spread of HIV in countless African communities that have been unreached by resources from the Global Fund and its counterparts.
In addition to pushing ideas about sexual morality that have roots (even if shallow ones) in religious texts, religious leaders have been promoting innovations to prevent the spread of HIV These stories, too, have gone untold— unacknowledged by the scientific literature and Western press. We have to wonder why, because condoms, divorce, and booze often make for excellent stories.
On condoms— the public health buff’s favorite subject— religious leaders have been taking pragmatic positions. Most support the use of condoms to prevent HIV transmission. In the late 1980s, a Catholic priest in Tanzania, Father Bernard Joinet, designed a prevention campaign that used images of lifeboats in a sea of AIDS, including one (rubber) boat labeled “condom”. With the support of many religious leaders and organizations, including the Islamic Medical Association of Uganda, this balanced and pragmatic message quickly diffused throughout East Africa.
Of course, support for condoms doesn’t mean that religious leaders are excitedly doling out condoms after communion. They are simply resigned to condoms as a lesser evil. At the same time, they criticize what they see as an obsessive focus on condom promotion on simple pragmatic grounds. First, condom-sex isn’t sustainable in real relationships where there is a desire to procreate. (Childbearing remains important in Africa.) A second factor is pleasure. Said one of the many people we interviewed: “Sex with a condom is like eating a banana with the peel still on it. I’ve never liked those gadgets.” This is why most of the more than two hundred religious leaders we interviewed think that condoms are not a sustainable way for couples to live their lives, navigate their relationships, and fully enjoy sex. With regrets to the Vatican and to its critics, low levels of condom use across Africa have little to do with official church teachings. When it comes to AIDS in contemporary Africa, official positions have taken a back seat to pragmatic ideas about how to avoid infection.
This pragmatism is evident in messages about alternative prevention strategies— many of which are endorsed by religious leaders. We frequently found religious leaders articulating new ways to navigate risky relationships, especially risky marriages, where one partner (imagine a careless, womanizing husband) is putting the other (stereotypically, a woman) at risk. In Malawi, we have documented a liberalization of attitudes toward divorce that, importantly, is specific to AIDS. Female-initiated divorce is not just tolerated under these circumstances— it is actively supported. Religious communities have been economically and emotionally supporting women who leave philandering husbands to protect themselves and to reduce the chance of their children being orphaned. New vocabulary for a religiously-just divorce has emerged as AIDS has spread. Women have been using these ideas to pressure their husbands to change their ways and to kick out dangerous husbands (“Take your mat and go!”, as our colleague Enid Schatz has described it) while leaving their own reputations intact.
Another example is related to religious prohibitions against alcohol consumption. Religious leaders from historically-imbibing traditions have begun to preach about abstaining from alcohol, and many from historically-teetotaling traditions have intensified their message. They have also begun to police members’ drinking. To Western ears this sounds like an effort to exert quasi-inquisitional religious authority over individuals. But understand the context: many of us drink in the comfort of our own homes (often accompanied by our loving partners). But consumption of alcohol across Africa tends to be more public, and to occur in places that provide opportunities for unsafe sex: women working at bars and bottle shops often double as prostitutes. So the religious leaders we interviewed not only preach against drinking and drunkenness, they also patrol local bars to deter members from wandering down a road that might lead to temptation and compromised decision-making. This is true not only of Christians. At the behest of his female congregants, one of our favorite imams camps out each evening at the trading center to send thirsty male Muslims safely home to their wives before they even have the chance to make a bad choice.
There is a more empirically accurate narrative about religion and AIDS in Africa, and we’ve described it at length in our recent book Religion and AIDS in Africa. There is no ambiguity in the data: religion has been central to curbing the spread of HIV in local communities across sub-Saharan Africa. Measurable changes and improvements were detectable before PEPFAR and Gates dollars started rolling in. This leaves the puzzle of why this story has remained untold for so long while atypical stories of religious leaders pushing abstinence and burning condoms continue to circulate widely.
Is this just a typical misrepresentation of Africa? That seems a plausible explanation. With some exceptions, journalistic coverage of Africa tends to be flawed, especially when it deals with religion. Favored topics are religious superstitions, leaders’ malfeasance, and poverty-porn featuring witchcraft. Since we can’t get into the heads of Western journalists on the Africa beat or their editors, we make no assumptions about the underlying motives here. But it is 2013, and the West is still in the thrall of the outdated assumption that societies need to jettison old superstitions (religion in particular) in order to modernize. More troubling, Westerners have a hard time seeing anything uniquely African as a positive source of change.
There’s a more general problem, neatly captured in Binyavanga Wainaina’s amusing piece for Granta called How to Write About Africa. In the standard narrative, ignorant or aimless Africans passively await guidance and assistance from plucky Westerners who ride in to help— often to intense applause. (Think of Nick Kristof’s regular columns praising earnest American volunteers.) Like Wainaina, we read such stories cautiously and suspiciously. Beyond being mildly offensive, these narratives simply don’t fit the Africa we know— a place, like any other, in which people converse about and respond to AIDS famine, war, and plain-old daily hardships in contested and complex ways. On the world’s most religious continent, people use religious ideas, language, and organizations to address problems, big and small. This is the source of religion’s positive contribution to the recent improvements in Africa’s AIDS situation. Such stories need to be told.
Rico says such stories do need to be told, and he's trying to help... (But 'Gates dollars'? Who knew he was famous for that, too?)
27 March 2013
More gubs for the day
To Wes Morosky, president of Duke’s Sports Shop in New Castle, Pennsylvania, the universal background check proposal now under debate in Congress would be a boon for business. “It’d keep everyone on the same playing field,” he said of proposals to require background checks for all gun sales that would put licensed dealers like his store at the center of gun culture. “And we’d charge for it.”
But not everyone agrees. The National Shooting Sports Foundation, a firearms industry trade group traditionally opposed to regulation, claims most firearms dealers are opposed to universal background checks because they will increase workload and legal risk.
“The retailer is required to keep all the same entries and record-keeping as if they were selling the gun,” said Lawrence Keane, the senior vice president and general counsel for NSSF. “They can be dragged into product liability lawsuits, so they’re exposed on a firearm that they didn’t sell and may not have insurance for. And there are inventory issues in states with waiting periods.”
Just who wins this debate may help determine the outcome of the fight over gun control in the Senate. At stake is not just the President’s priority of establishing universal background checks for gun purchases, but the end game of a two-decade battle to bar all sales of firearms to people with felony records or mental instability that has been determined to be dangerous by a judge.
Currently, only the sixty percent of gun buyers who shop at licensed gun dealers need to undergo background checks. Dealers must check the names of buyers against a Federal database of people not allowed to buy guns. If a name clears, the Federal government keeps no record of the buyer, but the gun store is required to keep a basic record of the transaction.
For the roughly forty percent of guns purchased from sources other than a licensed gun dealer, including collectors and individual sellers at gun shows, no background check is required. That would change under the “universal” background check system that has been proposed by the White House and the Senate Democratic leadership. In the new system, private sellers and buyers would be required to meet in person with a licensed dealer, where the dealer would check the buyer against the Federal database for a fee. As with dealer purchases, a record of the sale would be retained by the licensed dealer. The Federal government would still be prohibited from creating a national records database.
For the National Rifle Association, these new requirements are, nonetheless, “a step toward national gun registration” by the Federal government that would take away the rights of law-abiding gun owners. “The whole thing, universal checks, is a dishonest premise,” said Wayne LaPierre, the association’s executive vice president in an appearance on NBC‘s Meet The Press. “There’s not a bill on the Hill that provides a universal check. Criminals aren’t going to be checked. They’re not going to do this.”
In an unconventional turn, gun control advocates are touting the potential benefits for dealers in embracing universal background checks due to increased foot-traffic. “It’s something that existing dealers like because they get traffic,” says John Lowe of the Brady Campaign. “A lot of dealers make most of their money off of accessories.”
The system of universal background checks envisioned on the Federal level already exists in the state of California. For decades, all gun purchases have required checks against the Federal database, with little incident.
Mike Klein, an owner of a gun store called Warrior One in Riverside, California, where state law mandates ten-day waiting periods, and that all private sales be conducted through a licensed dealer, points to the success of universal background checks. “There are a lot of people who get denied— people who got in trouble when they were younger and thought it’d be clear or just wishing to get lucky,” he said. “Stuff gets caught left and right in private sales.”
While the details of the new legislation— including the role of gun retailers— are being negotiated, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has begun preparing for debate and a vote on the proposal as part of a broader post-Newtown gun control package. It is expected to begin shortly after Congress returns from recess on 8 April.
Rico says it's worked so well in California... (Sarcasm warning.)
Idiot for the day
A driver apparently struck several parked cars in West Philadelphia overnight in order to avoid gunfire. Officers were dispatched to a report of parked vehicles that were hit on the 1400 block of North Allison Street in the Carroll Park neighborhood at about 2:15 a.m., police said. There was also a report of gunshots, police said, and investigators believe a pick-up truck swerved into multiple parked cars in order to avoid being hit by the gunfire.
The driver of the truck hasn't been located. Police have not identified any suspects in the shooting. There were no reports of anyone being hit by the gunfire or injured when the truck crashed. It wasn't immediately clear how many vehicles were hit or how badly they were damaged.
Rico says more felony stupid...
Feebs for the day
That's slang for both the FBI and the feeble-minded, both of whom figure in this article by Sam Wood at Philly.com:
Rico says we'll never know, until the saucers land on the White House lawn...
An FBI memo noting the alleged recovery of three UFOs in New Mexico is the law enforcement agency's most requested and viewed document. By far. Not that you need to make an official request. The truth is out there. It's available to anyone who navigates to the FBI's website.
Dated 22 March 1950, and addressed to then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, the memo relates a third-hand claim as told to an FBI agent.
The person, whose name is redacted, told the agent that an Air Force investigator had told him that "high-powered radar" had jammed the steering mechanism of three "flying saucers" causing them to crash to Earth.
The memo reads:"They were described as being circular in shape with raised centers, approximately fifty feet in diameter. Each one was occupied by three bodies of human shape but only three feet tall, dressed in metallic cloth of a very fine texture. Each body was bandaged in a manner similar to the blackout suits used by speed fliers and test pilots."Despite the dramatic account, the memo abruptly states that its writer, Washington-based agent Guy L. Hottel, declined to investigate. "No further evaluation was attempted," Hottel wrote.
There's little mystery to the memo. It's connected to a sixty-year-old hoax. And it bears the traces of at least seven generations of whisper-down-the-lane.
The International Business Times reported in 2011:"The memo was the end of a long chain of tale-telling. The Hottel memo repeats a story from the Wyandotte Echo, a legal newspaper in Kansas City, Kansas, in January of 1950, which was repeated to Guy Hottel by an Air Force investigator who read the story and pasted it into a memo himself; such practices were common in the days before scanning documents was possible and memos had to be typed out. That news story draws from the account of a Rudy Fick, a local used car dealer."Fick had heard the story from two men, who had heard it from a radio station advertising manager, who had heard it from a con man. (Whew!)
The con man, Silas Newton, sold a treasure-finding device called a "doodlebug". And he claimed his dooglebugs were the best because they were constructed with alien technology, according to the International Business Times.
The FBI, which wrote about the memo yesterday, did not elaborate on the hoax element of the story. But the agency's post links the Hottel memo to the FBI file on 1947's so-called Roswell incident, if only because both files are publicly available in the agency's vault. It notes that the FBI rarely investigates reports of extraterrestrial sightings.
Said the FBI:"For a few years after the Roswell incident, Director Hoover did order his agents, at the request of the Air Force, to verify any UFO sightings. That practice ended in July of 1950, four months after the Hottel memo, suggesting that our Washington Field Office didn't think enough of that flying saucer story to look into it."
Rico says we'll never know, until the saucers land on the White House lawn...
Holy Hogwarts, indeed!
Holy Hogwarts! Scientists are one step closer to creating a real version of Harry Potter's Cloak of Invisibility. A team of physicists announced they had successfully hidden a seven-inch cylinder from a microwave imaging device with a "three-dimensional stand-alone mantle cloak". The cloak is constructed out of a "metasurface", an ultrafine mesh of copper-tape filaments, each thinner than a human hair, according to the team's paper published in the New Journal of Physics. The fishnet design of the metasurface scattered radiowaves in a pattern that was opposite to those reflected from the cylinder, said the team which is based at the University of Texas at Austin.
"When the scattered fields from the cloak and the object interfere, they cancel each other out and the overall effect is transparency and invisibility at all angles of observation," said co-author of the study, Andrea Alu. In principle, the technique could be used to hide objects in visible light, said Alu. (We'll believe it when we don't see it.) Alu told NBCNews that the cloaking materials could be used to camouflage objects from radar.
The paper comes with plenty of caveats. And it'll be a long while until anyone is able to use the discovery to hunt for the real world equivalents of Voldemort's Horcruxes.
But it's a step in the right direction. Until then, the team believes the cloaking surfaces soon may be used on tiny biomedical and devices.
Rico says that science fiction has a habit of becoming science fact...
Gubs for the day
It was the phone call gun enthusiasts feared under President Obama's America, and it came unexpectedly for one South Jersey man sucking down some cold ones at the local Applebee's: Come home now, the police are here. They want to take a look at your guns.
Police in Carneys Point in Salem County, New Jersey said Shawn Moore was "ranting and waving, aggressive, and acting arrogantly" when he rushed home from the restaurant on 14 March to find them there, asking to look at his firearms because of an anonymous call they had received about his children's safety.
Moore later apologized for his behavior, police said, and his wife, Julie, told them he was still reeling from Obama's election in 2008. "While we were waiting, Julie spoke to us, stating that Shawn has not been the same person since President Obama was elected. She stated he is obsessed with gun control, owning weapons, and his right to bear arms," an officer wrote in the police report, obtained by the Daily News. "Julie seemed embarrassed at her husband's behavior, however, she did not seem surprised."
Moore made national headlines last week after it was reported that someone saw a picture on Facebook of his son holding the military-looking .22-caliber rifle he received for his eleventh birthday, and called both police and New Jersey's Division of Children and Families. Moore wrote about the incident on an online firearms forum afterward, and the story went national after Glenn Beck's conservative news site, The Blaze, picked it up.
The police report said the anonymous caller had expressed other concerns as well, claiming that Julie Moore instructed her son to shoot "anyone who breaks in to their home" and that Shawn Moore had "issues with alcohol" and multiple DUI offenses.
When Moore got home, police said he smelled of alcohol and he definitely had an issue with officers and DCF workers being there. Moore had spoken with noted firearms attorney Evan Nappen on the phone before he arrived, and immediately asked the officers and DCF workers to leave.
"I tried to explain to Shawn that no one wanted to remove his firearms, to which Shawn rebuffed that there is legislation going through Congress to ban his firearms," one officer wrote.
In a news release issued after the incident, Carneys Point police said they were required by law to check up on the calls, and a spokeswoman for DCF said the same thing. DCF workers spoke with Moore's son, the police report stated, and no charges were filed against the couple, although the complaint remains "active".
A spokesman for New Jersey Attorney General Jeffrey Chiesa said Governor Chris Christie has asked his office to look into DCF's involvement in the case.
Police did find that Shawn Moore's firearms-identification card listed an address he hadn't lived at in more than two years. Nappen said Moore filed for a change of address when he moved to Carneys Point, but claimed the police department there still hadn't processed the paperwork. Shawn Moore has only one DUI offense, Nappen said.
Police in Carneys Point didn't return a phone call for comment Tuesday.
Moore is a National Rifle Association-certified firearms instructor and range-safety officer. He's also a member of the same local sportsmen's club that many local officers belong to. Nappen said Moore bought his son the Smith & Wesson M&P15-22 for target shooting.
Julie Moore admitted telling her son to shoot intruders, the police report noted, but Nappen said it's a moot point. "How is he going to shoot an intruder if the guns are locked up?" he asked. "The only way that would happen is if those guns were out of the safe and they were under attack by violent criminals."
Rico says okay, some people are too stupid to own gubs...
Another good one gone
History for the day
26 March 2013
Scam for the day
Rico says this is a classic:
We have some funds to move out of the middle east, my partner and I need someone we can trust. We want to move the funds to you, so that you can keep it for us in your safe account or an offshore account.
To send it to your house directly or a bank of your choice using Diplomatic Courier Service.
You will be offer 30%. If you are interested i will furnish you with full proceedings.
Sincerely,
U.S. Major Milland Kirby (wooh.john@yahoo.co.uk)
Sea-mud bonanza
Japanese scientists have found vast reserves of rare earth metals on the Pacific seabed that can be mined cheaply, a discovery that may break the Chinese monopoly on a crucial raw material needed in high-tech industries and advanced weapons systems.Rico says that wars have been fought for less...
"We have found deposits that are just two to four metres from the seabed surface at higher concentrations than anybody ever thought existed, and it won't cost much at all to extract," said Professor Yasuhiro Kato from Tokyo University, the leader of the team.
While America, Australia, and other countries have begun to crank up production of the seventeen rare earth elements, they have yet to find viable amounts of the heavier metals such as dysprosium, terbium, europium, and ytterbium that are most important.
China has a near total monopoly in the heavier end of the spectrum, though it is also the dominant supplier of the whole rare earth complex after driving rivals out of business in the 1990s. It still accounts for nearly a hundred percent of global supply.
Beijing shocked the world when it suddenly began to restrict exports in 2009, prompting furious protests and legal complaints by both the US and the EU at the World Trade Organisation. China claimed that it was clamping down on smuggling and environmental abuse. "Their real intention is to force foreign companies to locate plant in China. They're saying `if you want our rare earth metals, you must build your factory here, and we can then steal your technology," said Professor Kato.
Apple for the day
Apple may be looking to dial back the loudness in the next version of its iOS software for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.
Or at least that’s supposedly the goal of Jony Ive, who heads industrial design for Apple. Now that Ive is helping guide Apple’s software teams, word is that the company may root out some of the tackier elements of iOS.
A report by The Wall Street Journal claims that Ive and his team have been working closer with Apple’s software team, and that Ive now sits in on review sessions to vet new software designs:Some suggested that, in Apple’s next mobile operating system, Ive is pushing a more “flat design” that is starker and simpler, according to developers who have spoken to Apple employees, but didn’t have further details. Overall, they expect any changes to be pretty conservative.MG Siegler, TechCrunch’s Apple columnist, backs the report, saying he’s heard there will be “some fairly significant changes to the design within some key apps and system-level elements, but overall, don’t expect a hugely different iOS.”
One of those changes is already here: Apple updated its Podcast iOS app recently, eliminating the reel-to-reel tape deck imagery that pops up during playback. Also, the actual playback controls are no longer bounded by gray squares, which previously seemed to pop out from the screen. You might call it a “flat design.”
The backstory is that Jony Ive apparently loathes real-world analogues like the reel-to-reel tape deck. But right now, these design elements— known as skeuomorphisms— are all over Apple’s own apps. The backdrop for iOS GameCenter is a green felt table, and the backdrops for Notes and Reminders resemble lined paper (photo, right). The Voice Memo app is just a giant picture of a microphone (photo, center). In the Find my Friends app, you’ll notice leather and stitching throughout (photo, left).
According to reports last year by Fast Company and Daring Fireball, the main champion of these designs was Scott Forstall, the former head of iOS software, who stepped down in October of 2012. Forstall’s departure clears the way for cleaner, simpler designs. The Wall Street Journal‘s report certainly fits that narrative.
Thing is, skeuomorphism rarely shows up in third-party apps. You don’t see animations of spinning vinyl discs in Pandora or Spotify, or stories made to look like newsprint in Instapaper. It’s mainly an Apple thing.
So, assuming those elements are on their way out, the question is whether Apple will shake up its software design in a bigger way, moving away from the gradients and rounded edges that give iOS its bubbly look. Apple tends to avoid change for change’s sake, but iOS is now six years old, and it often looks that way next to the modern sheen of Android and Windows Phone. A little reupholstering could be nice.
Rico says he'll miss some of it...
25 March 2013
Broken bottle scam
Justin Peters has a Slate article about a New York City scam:
Rico says he hasn't been hit, yet, by this sort of thing, not traveling in Manhattan a lot; just as well, as he wouldn't respond well...
Earlier this week, I was walking to the subway near Times Square when a man brushed up against me. The collision caused him to drop a plastic bag that, from the shattering sound it made when it hit the ground, seemed to hold some sort of glass bottle. The guy started yelling, accusing me of bumping into him and breaking his bottle. As I started to walk away (I care little for other people’s bottles), he became agitated and grabbed my shoulder. I was thrilled. Several years in New York City, and I’ve never been mugged, accosted, or grifted. But now I was being targeted by one of the city’s most persistent scams: the broken bottle trick.
Here’s how it works: a con man walks around carrying a bag filled with broken or breakable glass and deliberately bumps into a gullible person (i.e., anyone wearing a fanny pack) and drops his cargo. The mark is accused of breaking the bottle and guilted or intimidated into paying for a replacement. There are several variations on this trick; sometimes the grifter uses eyeglasses, sometimes he claims that the mark broke a bottle of prescription medicine. Broken glass can be very lucrative: one longtime bottle trickster, sentenced (crazily) to twenty years to life for attempting to scam a visiting Swedish naval officer before threatening him with a knife, said in court that he pulled the trick up to ten times per day. Assuming twenty to forty dollars per successful scam, that’s a pretty decent day’s wage.
Obviously, the easiest thing to do when faced with an aggrieved, broken-bottle-wielding con man is to pay the money, avoid confrontation, and walk away feeling terrible about yourself. But this is America, and in America, as I understand it, we don’t give in to terrorists or small-time hustlers. So here are a few suggestions for what you might do if you find yourself caught up in this scam.
Run away, toward a crowd. The bottle scam often works because the victims feel physically threatened by the scammers. Don’t let yourself get into a situation where you feel like you’re in danger. If someone bumps into you and you hear the sound of broken glass, run away while yelling loudly for help. These guys don’t want to attract attention. Odds are they won’t follow you.
Raise your voice. To be clear: running away (and other non-confrontational responses) is still probably the best strategy here, but sometimes you just don’t want to move. Fair enough. If you do stick around, though, you have to give the scammer the sense that he picked the wrong person to mess with. The bottle tricksters are betting that you’ll be intimidated by them. But if you yell louder than they do, or trump their menace with some craziness of your own, they might back down and look for an easier target. Of course, they might also respond by trumping you with a whole new level of craziness, but those are the risks you run when you’re a tough-talking badass who doesn’t take any guff.
Extend the encounter. Here’s an interesting example of how to deal with a scammer: “Naim Jabbar had two pairs of broken eyeglasses in a bag when cops arrested him last month. The ex-con bumped into his latest victim on West 53rd Street and Fifth Avenue, court records show. ‘You broke my glasses! You own me $125!’ Jabbar, 41, yelled. But when his victim asked him to come back to his office to figure out a solution, Jabbar slunk off, court papers said.” This strategy makes sense, and is perhaps something to consider. Who doesn’t hate going up to offices?
Demand proof of what you broke. If you’ve got the time, and want to engage with a con man, this is another option. Gothamist gives an example of how this strategy might work, from a guy who was accused of breaking a bottle of prescription medicine: “I said, you know, I'm happy to pay for it if it is what you claim it is, but I want to see what was in the bag. He assures me that it’s fine, that I should just walk east with him to the place. …I refuse after he won’t tell me the name of the place or what it was he bought, and I walk back to the trash can and I look inside the two black plastic bags, to find two broken SoBe bottles.” Though I guess SoBe is a sort of medicine, if what’s ailing you is a lack of awesomely extreme beverage sensations, that is.
Carry around your own bag of bottles. Okay, this one might not be the most realistic idea, and it definitely requires some advance planning, but I can’t think of a better way to confound a bottle trickster than by dropping your own bag upon contact, and demanding that he reimburse you. “I broke your bottle? No way, man, you broke my bottle!” Then you shake hands and go on your way.
Hope that the scammer is incompetent. This was how I got out of my own bottle-trick incident. Maybe the guy forgot his lines— or maybe he actually was carrying a valuable bottle of some sort— but he never got around to asking me for any money. “All I want is for you to say you’re sorry,” he screamed. “I’m sorry!” I screamed back. “Thank you,” he said, and I walked away, a bit confused but none the worse for wear. I suspect it was his first day on the job.
Rico says he hasn't been hit, yet, by this sort of thing, not traveling in Manhattan a lot; just as well, as he wouldn't respond well...
How many women wear thongs to exercise?
It's no surprise that much of the press is having a bit of fun with the story about Lululemon recalling a bunch of wildly overpriced yoga pants because you can see everything the good Lord gave yuppie housewives when they bend over in them. But for all the punning headlines and snark, I feel the issue has really been buried here. What, exactly, has the onslaught of transparent yoga pants taught us about the personal habits of ladies who simply cannot sweat in anything that costs less than my monthly phone bill? While I enjoyed this cheeky debate about whether or not there's a way to spin "see-through pants" as a good thing, I can't believe Charlotte Cowles just blew past this tidbit like it was no big deal:That said, there is the thong issue, which I can understand. The problem with sheer yoga pants isn't so much that your butt cheeks are visible, but that your thong is. Still, I don't see why this is a terrible concern, since lots of ladies' thongs stick out during yoga anyway.Cowles talks about "your thong" as if nothing is more suitable for exercising than wearing underwear specifically designed to slide between your butt cheeks and attack you at the slightest provocation. What kind of sexualized hell are these poor women living in that they can't even give up porn-compliant underwear in order to keep their bodies lean and toned for future thong-wearing situations? I was under the impression that yoga was supposed to be a healthful activity, and yet here women are, contorting their bodies in a strap of fabric made to respond by straining painfully at your most sensitive bits. Yoga is supposed to be relaxing, not reminiscent of a visit to the proctologist.
Here's an idea for women who really are this worried about having visible panty lines under your yoga pants: Don't wear underwear. It's not like flies or ants are going to get in there if you don't seal it off tightly. If your concern is maintaining maximum sexiness at all times, never fear. My careful perusal of photography provided for straight male audiences suggests that, while men do indeed find the thong sexy, they have an even stronger preference for women who are wearing no underwear at all. If you choose to share your preferences with the world at large through the the yoga pants equivalent of vanishing ink, well, that's not up to the rest of us to judge.
Rico says he'll vote for that...
Sandusky maintains innocence
The interviews are part of a new documentary (video, above) by John Ziegler, expected to defend Joe Paterno.
Rico says it's still too bad that Sandusky basically killed Joe Paterno, but he could've prevented all this...
CFAA might be getting a whole lot worse
Justin Peters has a Slate article about computer fraud:
Rico says that, as ever, don't do the crime if you can't do the time...
For a while now I’ve been saying that Congress ought to revise the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), the vaguely worded, overly broad computer crime statute that has been in the news due to its role in the indictment of high-profile defendants like Reuters deputy social media editor Matthew Keys, hacker Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer, and Internet activist Aaron Swartz. Well, the House Judiciary Committee is indeed circulating a bill that would reform the CFAA. The trouble is that it fails to address any of the CFAA’s major flaws, and, in fact, just puts more power into the hands of overzealous prosecutors. Be careful what you wish for, I guess.
The CFAA was passed in 1984, and it still reads like an alarmist response to the movie WarGames. It provides big penalties for those who tamper with or unauthorizedly access so-called “protected computers”, which are defined, in part, as computers that engage in interstate or foreign commerce or communications. Back in 1984, relatively few computers fit that definition. Today, every device with an Internet connection qualifies as a protected computer.
The times have changed, but the law hasn’t kept up with the times, and as a consequence the CFAA now reaches far beyond its original scope. A bill designed for hackers who targeted government or financial systems is now being used against people who commit much less serious offenses. Matthew Keys, for instance, is facing up to 25 years in prison for facilitating the brief defacement of one story on the website of the Los Angeles Times. This is disproportionate.
The bill being considered by the House Judiciary Committee would make the CFAA even more draconian. It stiffens penalties across the board— accessing a protected computer without authorization and subsequently causing damage, for example, would now be punishable by up to ten years in prison, as opposed to the current five. It would make “trafficking in passwords” used to access any protected computer an offense punishable by up to ten years in prison— which, theoretically, could mean that sharing your login information for Netflix or The New York Times could land you in jail. And it allows prosecutors to punish failed attempts at computer crime as harshly as successful attempts.
There’s one change that I do like. The bill would create a new subsection that deals with aggravated damage to “critical infrastructure computers”, defined as computers that manage or control the power grid, transit systems, the stock market, oil pipelines, and so on. Tampering with these sorts of systems could be punished by up to thirty years in prison. I like this new section because it is specific. These are the sorts of “protected computers” the CFAA ought to be dealing with; tightening the general definition of “protected computer” along those lines would go a long way toward fixing the CFAA and making it more relevant for the modern age.
But this new bill mostly doesn’t do that. It keeps things vague. I’m not too upset about this bill, which is, after all, only a draft resolution, and which will inevitably be revised and amended numerous times before it makes it to the floor— if it ever makes it to the floor. I’m just confused. As Techdirt’s Mike Masnick put it, the draft resolution is so harsh, “it almost feels like the Judiciary Committee is doing it on purpose as a dig at online activists who have fought back against things like SOPA, CISPA, and the CFAA.”
I guess that’s possible, and I suspect this is largely a response to groups like Anonymous. The bill would redefine computer crimes as a form of racketeering, which seems like something specifically designed to make it easier to prosecute groups like Anonymous.
But it’s just as likely that Congress is just acting by reflex here. We overcharge for all sorts of nonviolent offenses in this country, and prison sentences are routinely overlong. A legislator has never lost an election by being too tough on crime. It’s not that the government shouldn’t concern itself with computer-abetted offenses. But the punishment should fit the crime, and the CFAA too often ensures that it doesn’t.
Rico says that, as ever, don't do the crime if you can't do the time...
Funding a better condom
Bill Gates’ latest charitable contribution in the field of public health: $100,000 to the inventor of a condom that actually feels good. Grand Challenges in Global Health, a research foundation established by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is offering the grant money for the best “testable hypothesis” for “the next-generation condom”, one that “significantly preserves or enhances pleasure”. The goal is to eliminate one of the major barriers to condom use: “From the male perspective,” the call for entries says, “condoms decrease pleasure as compared to no condom, creating a trade-off that many men find unacceptable.”
Some critics have ribbed Gates for pledging money to alleviate this male woe. Gawker called the initiative a boon for “creeps” and “pervs” who forgo condoms because “they just don't feel good, amirite? You know what I'm talking about, fellas. [Exaggerated wink.]” Concluded Popular Science: “Men are idiots.” Commenters piled on: “I'm really bored with the whole ‘condoms reduce sensitivity!’ whining. If you can orgasm while wearing a condom, it can't be that bad.”
Seriously? Gates wants to devote a tiny fraction of his considerable fortune toward making condoms feel amazing, and some people are like: “Meh! Sex isn’t that bad. Suck it up, dudes!” Of course condom discomfort isn’t an excuse for anyone to pressure a partner into unsafe sex. But pervy creeps are not the only ones who will benefit from a better condom. For, uh, some women, today’s options can be physically irritating, drying, weird smelling, and gross tasting. Some of us just prefer to have sex with partners who rate the experience better than “not that bad”. Many of us accept condoms (or safe alternatives to intercourse) over the risk of unplanned pregnancy and STIs, but we don’t have to like it, and that's a problem that's worth solving.
Underlining all of this razzing of Gates’ initiative are some pretty backward messages: safe sex shouldn’t feel good; avoiding consequences like pregnancy and STIs ought to require personal sacrifice; men should be happy to just be having sex, regardless of the circumstances. These beliefs reinforce the idea that sex is inherently either dangerous or unpleasant. We now have the opportunity to leverage technology to cut through some of that moralizing around safe sex. Gates’ money— and the social stamp of his approval— is crucial to that effort: given the stigma that surrounds it, it can be difficult to attract outside innovators to the sex industry. As the call for entries notes: “Condoms have been in use for about four hundred years, yet they have undergone very little technological improvement in the past fifty years.” They're not that bad, but they could always get better.
Rico says that one can only imagine what Steve Jobs would have had to say about this... (And, no, those are not lemon slices in the photo.)
Obscure history for the day
Rico says the simple solution is just to post it, so here it is; enjoy:
North Carolina Troops in South America
by Chief Justice Walter Clark
(This is substantially the same article that appeared in The University Magazine in 1894. A more complete account of the expedition, by the writer, will be found in Harpers Magazine for October of 1896.North Carolina has always known how to make history. she has never troubled herself to write it. Hence much credit due her is unrecorded. There were certainly “brave men before Agamemnon”. But we know not their names nor their deeds. They serve not to arouse the heart. For posterity they have, in effect, not lived, while Achilles, Hector, Nestor, and Ulysses are alive to this day, more truly and more effectively alive, as regards their impress upon the age than most of the men whom we meet on the streets.
From Volume IV, Number 6, October 1904 of The North Carolina Booklet Editors: Miss Mary Hilliard Hinton & Mrs. E.E. Moffitt of the North Carolina Society of the Daughters of the Revolution, Raleigh, North Carolina.
There are many forgotten chapters in North Carolina history which, if recalled, would brighten her fame. Among the many creditable incidents of her colonial history are the patriotism and enterprise shown in sending her troops on the successive expeditions to St. Augustine, to South America, and to join Braddock’s march to the Ohio. We will, in this paper, be restricted to the South American expedition.
The only time prior to 1898 that troops from any part of the United States have ever served beyond the limits of this continent was in the expedition to Venezuela in 1740, known as the Cartagena expedition. North Carolina was represented there, and both by land and sea her troops did their duty. She sent four hundred men, a contribution as large in proportion to the population of the colony at that time as if the State were now to furnish fifty thousand troops. We know that these men served, that they took an active part in the sea attack on Boca Chica, and that they subsequently aided in the deadly assault by land upon the fort of San Lazaro, when half the storming column was left dead or wounded on the field. We know that not a fifth of the gallant four hundred returned. But we know with certainty the names of only two officers of these brave North Carolinians. Indeed, the expedition itself is almost unknown to the North Carolinians of the present day. It may not be amiss therefore, to recall the little that has been left us of this early display of patriotism by the province of North Carolina.
History records few instances of official incapacity and mismanagement so gross as the ill-fated expedition to South America back in 1740, in which perished, to no purpose, over three thousand Americans from the colonies on the Atlantic seaboard, and nearly seven times that number of English. Historians have not loved to linger over its details. Hence it is hardly noted in our books, yet it was a stern, sad reality in its day.
Six times have troops from what is now the United States visited in hostility the territory of our neighbor on the north; in King William’s War in 1690; in Queen Anne’s War in 1710; in the taking of Louisburg in 1744; in the old French War of 1755-1763 (when Quebec fell, and Canada passed to the English); again during the Revolution, and in the War of 1812. In 1846, we invaded our Southern neighbor. The expedition against Cartagena is the only case in which our troops ever engaged an enemy on another continent. The War of 1898 was upon the islands of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines.
In October of 1739, England declared war against Spain. The real object, all pretexts aside, was to open the ports of Spanish America to British vessels. These ports were hermetically closed to all except Spanish keels. The object was no small one from a mercantile standpoint, for Spanish America then reached from the southern boundary of Georgia and the northern boundary of California down to Tierra del Fuego and Cape Horn. From this vast territory there could be excepted on the mainland only the possessions of the Portuguese in Brazil, together with Jamaica and a few of the smaller islands in the West Indies. The stake was a large one, and England could win only by destroying the colonial system of Spain.
It was a contest for the enrichment of the merchants and traders of England. Small interest had the North American colonies therein. But loving letters and proclamations were sent out, calling on them for aid. Promptly, on the outbreak of war, Anson was sent to the Pacific coast and Vernon to the Atlantic. Disaster at sea destroyed the hopes of conquest for the former and, turning his expedition into one for booty, and losing all his ships but one, he circumnavigated the globe, reaching home by way of the east, loaded with fame and enriched with spoils. Vernon, in November of 1739, with ease captured Porto Bello and Fort Chagres (near the present town of Aspinwall), both on the Isthmus of Panama, and became the hero of the hour. The following year, Great Britain determined to send out a masterful expedition under the same victorious auspices.
In 1740, Great Britain, then at war with Spain, determined to strike a blow at the Spanish Colonial possessions. An expedition left Spithead, England in October of 1740 for the West Indies, composed of fifteen thousand sailors, commanded by Sir Chaloner Ogle, and twelve thousand land troops under Lord Cathcart. There were thirty ships of the line and ninety other vessels. On arriving in the West Indies, they were joined at Jamaica by thirty-six companies, containing three thousand six hundred men, from the North American colonies.
By the royal instructions, these companies consisted of a hundred men each, including four sergeants, four corporals, and two drummers, besides commissioned officers, consisting of one captain, two lieutenants, and an ensign. The British government, however, reserved the appointment of field and staff officers and one lieutenant and one sergeant in each company. The total was over thirty-six hundred men. The provinces of New Hampshire, Delaware, South Carolina, and Georgia sent no troops— the latter two probably because their forces were sent against St. Augustine (to which North Carolina also contributed
men), and Delaware was probably counted in with Pennsylvania, it being then known as ‘the three lower counties on the Delaware’. Why New Hampshire took no part is not explained.
It was ordered that the American troops should be embodied in four regiments or battalions, under the command of Sir Alexander Spotswood, to whom Colonel William Blakeney was to serve as adjutant-general. Spotswood had served under Marlborough at Blenheim in 1704, had been governor of Virginia from 1710 to 1733, and, in 1714, had been the first white man to cross the Blue Ridge Mountains, a feat which procured him the honor of knighthood. He was an officer of rare talent, a scholar, and a man of high character. His career was, unfortunately, cut short by his death at Annapolis on 7 June, 1740, while waiting for his troops to assemble. He was succeeded in the command by Sir William Gooch, then governor of Virginia, a post which he filled from 1729 to 1749. Blakeney, the adjutant-general sent out from England, was born in County Limerick in Ireland in 1672, and was therefore in his sixty-ninth year. He lived over twenty years after this expedition, to hold Stirling Castle for the King ‘in the ’45’, to surrender Minorca (of which he was governor) to the French, after a gallant resistance, in 1756, and to be raised to the peerage as Lord Blakeney. He died in 1761.
The Massachusetts troops were commanded by Captain Daniel Goffe, Captain John Prescott, Captain Thomas Phillips, Captain George Stewart, and Captain John Williams. The first lieutenancies of these companies were presumably filled under the general order by appointments sent out from England and are not named.
Rhode Island sent two companies of one hundred men each. The Newport company, equipped in the spring, was commanded by Captain Joseph Sheffield, and the Providence company by Captain William Hopkins. The names of the other officers are not given, but it is mentioned that the first lieutenants of each company were sent out from England.
Connecticut sent two companies, commanded, it would seem, by Captain Winslow and Captain Prescott and, in this province also, in the Fall of 1741 and in February of 1742, a proclamation was issued to raise recruits under Captain Prescott, who had been sent home by General Wentworth for that purpose from Jamaica.
New York sent one company in September and four more on 10 October. These last were joined by those of the New Jersey troops which were to embark at Amboy; the West Jersey troops were to go down the Delaware River to meet them. On 12 October, the expedition sailed to join Colonel Gooch with the Maryland and Virginia troops. New York raised £2,500 for the service, and Massachusetts voted £17,500. Connecticut gave £4,000 towards bounties (premia, they styled it) and the expenses of the two companies she sent. Application was made to New York also for recruits in 1741. New Jersey raised two companies, and voted £2,000 and recruits, for they were also duly called for there, as elsewhere, Captain Farmer having been sent home for that purpose. Pennsylvania sent eight companies, but refused any appropriation. Of the Pennsylvania troops, three hundred were white bond-servants who were given their liberty on condition of enlistment, much to the dissatisfaction of the province. Maryland voted £500 and sent three companies. Virginia sent four hundred and appropriated £5,000 for their support. The captain of one of her Companies was Lawrence Washington, the half-brother of George Washington. Lawrence, who was then twenty years of age, distinguished himself in the capture of the fort at Boca Chica, and was also in the deadly assault on San Lazaro, when six hundred men, half ofthe assaulting column, were left on the ground. He was fourteen years older than his more-distinguished half-brother.
North Carolina sent four companies. Governor Johnston, in his letter to the Duke of New Castle of 5 November 1740, states that three of these companies were raised in the northern part of the province, i.e., in the Albemarle section. The other, it seems, was recruited in the Cape Fear section; there is some reason to believe that Colonel James Innes, of subsequent fame, served as Captain of this company. All four companies embarked on transports in the Cape Fear area on 5 November 1740, and sailed directly for Jamaica, where they joined Admiral Vernon’s squadron.
The contribution of money by North Carolina to this expedition was as large in proportion as her levy of men. On 21 August 1740, Governor Johnston informed the Assembly of the King’s desire that North Carolina should assist in the war. This the Assembly promptly assented to, and a tax was laid of three shillings on the poll but, owing to the scarcity of money, it was provided that the tax could be paid either ‘in specie, or by tobacco at ten shillings the hundred; rice at seven shillings and six pence the pound; dressed deer skins at two shillings and six pence the pound; tallow at four pence; pork at seven shillings the barrel; or current paper money at seven and half for one’. Warehouses for receiving the commodities were directed to be built in each county.
The forces were united in the harbor of Kingston, Jamaica on 9 January 1741, under Admiral Vernon. Had he at once proceeded to Havana, as intended, it must have fallen, and Cuba would have passed under English rule, and the treasures sent from New Spain would have been intercepted. But, with strange incompetence, Vernon lay idle until Havana was fortified and garrisoned, and then he started east in search of the French fleet off Hispaniola. Finding that it had left for France, towards the end of February he sailed to attack Cartagena on the coast of Venezuela.
On the way, he fell in with the French fleet. France was still at peace with Great Britain, though not very friendly. This fleet refused to show its colors. A fierce fight ensued, in which many men were killed or wounded. The next morning, the French fleet showed its colors, whereupon the Admirals gravely apologized to each other and each fleet took its course; this is a characteristic incident of those times. Tobias Smollett, the celebrated historian and novelist, was serving in the British fleet as an assistant surgeon, and has left us an accurate description, it is said, of this sea fight in the naval battle depicted by him in Roderick Random.
On 4 March 1741, the fleet anchored off Cartagena, which had three hundred guns mounted. Instead of pressing the attack, Admiral Vernon lay inactive until the ninth, giving opportunity for better fortification and reinforcements by the enemy. He then landed troops on Terra Bomba, near the mouth of the harbor known as Boca Chica, and attacked the land batteries with his ships. In this attack Lord Aubrey Beauclerc, commanding one of the ships, was slain. In the land attack, two hundred American troops, led by Captain Lawrence Washington, were mentioned for their gallantry. The passage, however, was carried on 25 March, and three days later the troops were landed within a mile of Cartagena, which lay at the other end of the spacious harbor, which is really a bay several miles in length. the town was protected by the formidable fort San Lazaro. The enemy abandoned Castillo Grande, the fort on the opposite side of the bay. Had there been proper concurrence between the attacks made by the land forces and the fleet, San Lazaro would have been readily taken, but the worst of feeling prevailed between General Wentworth and Admiral Vernon, and thus there were two poor commanders instead of one good one, as was so essential to success. The town was bombarded for three days, terrifying the inhabitants and injuring church steeples and convents. After repeated demands by Admiral Vernon that a land attack should be made, sailing into the inner harbor, Admiral Vernon disembarked the land forces.
Lord Cathcart having died, command of these forces had passed to General Wentworth. The ill-feeling and rivalry between Wentworth and Admiral Vernon thwarted every movement. An attack was made on San Lazaro on 9 April, but it was not aided by the fleet, and was repulsed, losing nearly half (179 killed, 459 wounded, 16 prisoners) of the twelve hundred men of the storming column on the field, among them its gallant leader, Colonel Grant.
The entire expedition was shamefully mismanaged. The troops were brave, but the leaders were incompetent. The heat and disease of the climate slew more than the sword. The army finally withdrew, but it numbered, upon reaching Jamaica, only three thousand of the original fifteen thousand. Of these, only two thousand survived to reach home. The loss among the sailors was also heavy. The number of North Carolina troops who returned home is not known, but it is presumed that their ratio of loss equaled that of the rest of the army. Of the five hundred men sent by Massachusetts, only fifty returned. Such, in brief, is an outline of this expedition. Admiral Vernon, incidentally, touches upon later American history, as his name was bestowed by Lawrence Washington (who had served under him) on his residence, which afterwards took its place in history as Mount Vernon. It is the irony of fate which thus links his name with immortal fame, for few men so incompetent ever trod a quarter-deck as that same vice-admiral of the Blue, Edward Vernon. He was subsequently cashiered from the Navy.
This ill-fated expedition did add one word to the English language. According to the Army and Navy regulations of the day, rum was served out twice a day to the fifteen thousand sailors and twelve thousand soldiers. By Admiral Vernon’s order it was, for the first time, diluted with water before being issued, to the intense disgust of the recipients. He wore a grogram overcoat, and the men dubbed the thin potation old ‘grog’. After many unflattering comments upon the leading, Smollet adds: “Good brandy and good rum mixed with hot water, composing a most unpalatable drench, was the cause of failure.” We, however, can see the cause in a far truer light.
Prior to 1760, the regimental rolls were not preserved in the British War Office, hence we know very little of the distinctive composition of the American contingent. We do know that there were eight regiments of British troops, and four battalions of Americans. The latter were composed of thirty-six companies and contained thirty-five or thirty-six hundred men. Of these, it appears from the letter of Colonel William Blakeney to the Duke of New Castle on 23 October 1740, that there were four companies from Virginia, eight from Pennsylvania, and three from Maryland. These were to go out under Colonel William Gooch, the lieutenant governor of Virginia. There preceded these five companies from Boston in Massachusetts, two from Rhode Island, two from Connecticut, five from New York, and three from New Jersey. The four companies from North Carolina arrived last of all. On arrival, the Northern companies were to be commanded by Colonel Gooch, and those from Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina were to be commanded by Colonel Blakeney. On 14 December 1740, Colonel Blakeney wrote from Jamaica that Colonel Gooch, along with the Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia troops, had arrived, and that the North Carolina troops were expected daily. They subsequently arrived, but exactly when is not known.
In 1740, Lord Cathcart was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the British Forces in America. However, he died on the passage out, was buried on Dominica, and was succeeded by General Wentworth. From a letter from General Gooch to the Duke of New Castle, it appears that the Colonial companies were placed in battalions without reference to the respective provinces from whence they came, and were distinguished merely as ‘The American Regiments’. From an extract of a return of Colonel Gooch, we find that in the Second Battalion was Lieutenant Colonel Coletrain “with the remainder of his company; viz: two lieutenants, two sergeants, two corporals, one drummer, and forty sentinels from North Carolina”. This is the only name of an officer, except Captain Robert Holton, which is distinctively given as being in command of North Carolina troops. It is not certain that Coletrain was from the State for, in one of the published accounts of that day, it is stated of these ‘American Regiments’ that the “field officers were all men of long service, named by His Majesty, and sent from Britain. The companies were raised chiefly by the interest and at the charge of their respective captains, of whom some were members of the Assembly in the province where they resided, while others lived upon their own plantations and had commands in the militia, and some few had been concerned in traffic”. His Majesty, it is further stated, “send out thirty cadets of family who were provided with positions as lieutenants in the American companies”. It was charged by a pamphleteer that “the greatest part if the private soldiers enlisted in North America were either Irish Papists, or Englishmen who had been under a necessity of leaving their own country”. This, if true of any of the provinces, could not have been so of the North Carolina companies. Governor Johnston of North Carolina, in his letter to the Duke of New Castle of 5 November 1740, says: “I have good reason to believe that we could have easily raise two hundred more men if it had been possible to negotiate the bills of exchange in this part of the continent but, as that was impracticable, we were obliged to rest satisfied with four companies”, which, he further states, “are now embarked and just going to sea”.
The most striking incident of the campaign— apart from its terrible mismanagement and loss of life— was the land attack upon the fortifications of Cartagena. General Wentworth, in a note to Admiral Vernon on 2 April 1741, demanded that a detachment of some fifteen hundred Americans should be landed, under the command of Colonel Gooch, to assist him. On 6 April, he acknowledged the landing of the Americans, who took part in the storming of San Lazaro on 9 April. This is thus described by Smollett:
“Stung by the reproaches of Admiral Vernon, General Wentworth called a council of his officers and, with their advice, he attempted to carry San Lazaro by storm. Twelve hundred men, headed by General Guise, and guided by some Spanish deserters or peasants, who were either ignorant or, more likely, in the pay of the Spanish governor whom they pretended to have left, marched boldly up to the foot of the fort. But the guides led them to the very strongest part of the fortifications and, what was worse, when they came to try the scaling ladders with which they were provided, they found them too short. This occasioned a fatal delay and, presently, the brilliant morning of the tropics broke, with its glaring light, upon what had been intended as a nocturnal attack. Under these circumstances, the wisest thing would have been an instant retreat, but the soldiers had come to take the fort and, with bulldog resolution, they seemed determined to take it at every disadvantage. They stood, under a terrible plunging fire, adjusting their ladders and and fixing upon points where they might climb, and they did not yield an inch of ground, though every Spanish cannon and musket told upon and thinned their ranks.”One party of grenadiers even attained a footing, on the top of a rampart, when their brave leader, Colonel Grant, was mortally wounded. The grenadiers were swept over the wall, but still the rest sustained the enemy’s fire for several hours, and did not retreat until six hundred, or one-half of their original number, lay dead or wounded at the foot of those fatal walls. It is said that Admiral Vernon stood inactive on his quarter-deck all the while, and did not send in his boats, full of men, until the last moment, when Wentworth was retreating. The heavy rains now set in, and disease spread with such terrible rapidity that, in less than two days, one-half the troops on shore were dead, dying, or unfit for service. The expedition was then given up, and the survivors re-embarked and sailed for Jamaica. They were later landed in Eastern Cuba, at a place christened Cumberland Harbor, probably Guantanamo, and strong appeals were made to the colonies for reinforcements.
Three thousand recruits, part of them from the North American colonies, were sent to Wentworth, and he also organized and drilled a thousand Jamaican negroes with the design of attacking Santiago de Cuba, but this was abandoned. Thus ended probably the most formidable and thoroughly equipped expedition sent out by Great Britain up to that time. Everything was expected of it and, under good leadership, it might have taken Cuba and anticipated, by more than a century and a half, the end of the rule of the Spanish in that island. Its failure is only comparable to that sustained by Nicias in Sicily, as narrated by Plutarch, and Vernon’s utter defeat overthrew the Walpole ministry.
It is certain that the North Carolinians were among the American troops taking part in the assault. It also appears, from Admiral Vernon’s reports, that the American colonies contributed several sloops to the fleet, but how many, and by whom commanded, is not stated. After his return to Jamaica, Vernon wrote to the Duke of Newcastle on 30 May 1741 that “without the aid of some of the Americans, we could not get our ships to sea”. Yet he had the affrontery to suggest that the survivors of the Americans should be colonized in Eastern Cuba, as “North America is already too thickly settled, and its people wish to establish manufactures which would injure those in Britain.”
In fact, many Americans, probably sailors in the sloops, were drafted into the British ships going to England. Thus, early in her career, 164 years ago this fall, North Carolina came to the front. She responded to the King’s call for aid with men and means, to the full of her ability. Her soldiers served, as they have always done since, faithfully, aye, brilliantly. Beneath the tropical sun, in the sea fight, at the carrying of the passage of Boca Chica, in the deadly assault upon San Lazaro, amid the more deadly pestilence that walked by noonday, North Carolinians knew how to do their duty, and to die. The merest handful returned home, but their state has preserved no memento of their deeds. The historian has barely mentioned them. Possibly the names of three of our soldiers have been preserved, yet the recollection of so much heroism should not be allowed to die. North Carolina should yet erect a centotaph to these, her sons, to the
‘Brave men who perished by their gunsto the unreturning brave who sleep beneath the walls of St. Augustine, by the Cartagenian summer sea beneath the walls of San Lazaro, and amid the rolling hills where Braddock fell.
Though they conquered not...”
Walter Claris, Raleigh, North Carolina, 10 October 1904
Rico says this is a classic British fuque de clusteur, to be repeated just over two hundred years later, in the same place (in Eastern Cuba, at Guantanamo) by the United States...
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