Random pictures - WWII end anniversary

Source: En Images. La Russie commémore les 75 ans de la fin de la Seconde Guerre mondiale

Random pictures - security posters

Source: National Security Agency (NSA) security/motivational posters from the 1950s and 1960s

Source: Security Awareness Posters 

Random charts - Kashmir

August 5th blog entry 'Kashmir... again'

 

Source: Kashmir: Background, Recent Developments, and U.S. Policy (15-pg CRS PDF)

Random pictures - da Vinci

 

Source: Digitized Manuscripts:  Leonardo da Vinci, Notebook ("Codex Arundel') 

"A collection of papers written in Italian by Leonardo da Vinci (b. 1452, d. 1519), in his characteristic left-handed mirror-writing (reading from right to left), including diagrams, drawings and brief texts, covering a broad range of topics in science and art, as well as personal notes..."

Random pictures - here be dragons

"The fantasy of California as an island earthly paradise can be traced back to a 1510 book, Las Sergas de Esplandian which describes a land of Amazonian women without a single man. The women were of course beautiful, had weapons made of gold and tamed wild beasts..."

Source: The phantom atlas: Islands, seas and countries on the map that don’t really exist

Random pictures - French revolution

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Source: 14,000 Free Images from the French Revolution Now Available Online

Search here. French Revolution Digital Archive

Random pictures - times change

 

Source: Empire of Drugs: Vintage ads for when cocaine and heroin were legal

Random pictures - art/history

 

 

Source: Vatican Library Digitization Project

Looks familiar?

 

Source: Hitler in disguise: US intelligence images of how Hitler could have disguised himself, 1944

 

Random pictures - Vatican archives

Source: Photos from inside the Vatican Secret Archives

Random charts - the blitz

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Source: Bomb Sight: Mapping the WW2 Bomb Census (interactive map)

Random picture - buffalo skulls

Source: Indians Saving the Buffalo People

Random picture - ghosts

Source: American troops on the Champs Elysees. From the Ghosts of  History series...

Great quotes

Picture source:

"... if a mandate was the solution, we can try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody to buy a house..."

- A campaigning Senator Obama in 2008, criticizing Hilary Clinton's proposal of an insurance mandate.

Eh?

Much ink has been spilled in reaction to the announcement that Steve Jobs is stepping down as Apple CEO (while remaining on its Board as Chairman) for health reasons. Encomiums galore. most very well deserved....

However, some seem to believe that Jobs and Apple were all things computing, apparently crediting them with pretty much everything technological... A small example: In cnet this blogger saw this article: Friday Poll: What was Steve Jobs' greatest hit? OK, so what's the problem... Well the intro to the poll went as follows:

"Steve Jobs stepped down as Apple CEO this week, prompting a flood of retrospectives about the legendary businessman who rewrote the rules of the game for entire industries.

Many waxed nostalgic over the brilliant arc of Jobs' career, which has been brought low by health problems. Heck, it even made me want to dig out my Apple IIc, my first computer, and see if it can still boot Beyond Castle Wolfenstein.

From the co-founding of Apple in 1976 to the launch of the iPad in 2010, Jobs redefined our relationship to technology by introducing innovative products that have become intuitive and indispensable everyday tools. Who would have thought that people actually wanted to own computers? And carry them around in their pockets, no less?

Apart from Apple, his achievements include the acquisition of what became Pixar, as well as the object-oriented software development model that changed the OS landscape."

Umm, so the writer doesn't explicitly credit Jobs and Apple for 'pocket computers', but it does seem to imply something along those lines! Well, HP's 95lx was being sold and bought by many starting in 1991, well before Apple's August 1993 entry in the PDA field, the Newton, which also was not particularly 'pocket-able.' And while Apple did introduce the Newton, it was championed by John Sculley and introduced when Michael Spindler was CEO... in the non-Steve Jobs era! And Steve Jobs supposedly said that Apple would never introduce a PDA while he was in charge! Aah!

Random pictures

Source: Military Art: The Threat in the 1980's - Series I and Series II Various Soviet threats...

Random picture

Source: The 50th Anniversary of the Building of the Berlin Wall

Parallels?

Source: Photographer Finds Beauty in Lost Places - "A Berlin-based photographer has captured the beauty of forgotten buildings from the communist era" and Detroit's Beautiful, Horrible Decline - "Two French photographers immortalize the remains of the motor city on film."

Alternating Detroit and 'East' German images of ruin and decay....

Random pictures

Source: Windows On The War: Soviet Tass posters at home and abroad 1941 to 1945 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Follow the link for full-sized versions and many more... Note: many of the posters would probably become somewhat "inconvenient" when the U.S. and U.K. were no longer partners but adversaries...

Many of these posters reflect typical themes, as cataloged by "Faces of the Enemy: Reflections of the Hostile Imagination" by Sam Keen, mentioned in a December 3rd, 2009 blog entry.

Great quotes

"Unless the law winks occasionally, you have no progress in medicine."

- John Cutler former assistant surgeon general of the U.S. Public Health Service, 1958. Involved in syphilis experiments, deliberately infecting Tuskegee airmen, as well as prisoners, military conscripts and prostitutes in Guatemala.... Read it and weep...

Guatemalan Victims Still Haunted by US Syphilis Study: The Devil's Experiments

Tuskegee, Guatemala - "... The Nazi “Doctor of Death,” Joseph Mengele, lived out his last years in hiding and infamy in South America. But the American Dr. Mengele, Dr. John C. Cutler, who infected human beings with syphilis in Guatemala, and studied syphilis in men in Alabama while denying treatment to them, died in the bosom of the American medical community, a man of honor and high esteem. Cutler’s diabolical crimes were “normalized and praised” because they were committed against non-white people ...."