Mind Meld 56: Incubating a Premature Future with Andrew J. Okeefe II

An interesting and somewhat spooky podcast about technology as a destroyer and a savior of the human race -
Mind Meld 56: Incubating a Premature Future with Andrew J. Okeefe II

Check out Andrew's page at the 'SingularityHub' website, as there are some interesting stories and videos over there, like this one about a retail store with no employees working in it.

I could imagine IKEA salivating over the above employlee-less store, but I bet you'd still get lost and find it hard to find your way out of an IKEA virtual store ... and you still wouldn't want to know how they made their IKEA meatballs in the future;-)

And don't forget to check out the TED website ... that's Third Eye Drops ... for some great podcast shows to have a listen to.

1977-2017: A 40 Year Block of Time in Turkey?

I was working on a follow up post to my 1967 themed post -
1967: The Present Can Only Be Viewed from the Past?
this morning, but this post I'm working on is about the year 1977.
Just like my previous post I'm heavily relying on Wikipedia for most of my information and links to write these posts.
As I'm going through the events of 1977 wondering which events to include in my blog post I came across a link to the Taksim Square massacre in Turkey.
I'd never heard of this event until now ... forty years later.

May 1 – The Taksim Square massacre in Istanbul results in 34 deaths, hundreds of injuries.

I wasn't even going to include that event in my post until I saw this news story this morning on a national Australian news website -

Turkey blocks access to Wikipedia 'to protect national security, public wellbeing'

"Access to Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia, has been blocked in Turkey over content said to present the country as supporting terror.

The country's official news agency quoted the Ministry of Transport, Maritime Affairs and Communications as saying the site was blocked for "becoming an information source acting with groups conducting a smear campaign against Turkey in the international arena".
"After technical analysis and legal consideration ... an administrative measure has been taken for this website [Wikipedia.Org]," the BTK telecommunications watchdog said in a statement on its website.
It cited a law that allows it to block access to individual web pages or entire websites for the protection of public order, national security or the wellbeing of the public.
The Anadolu news agency said officials had warned Wikipedia to remove content likening Turkey to terror groups, but the site "persistently" did not."

Sounds more like 1984 than 2017 in Turkey at the moment to me.

I also think it is ironic that -

January 1977– The world's first all-in-one home computer (keyboard/screen/tape storage), the Commodore PET, is demonstrated at the Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago

and that -

January 3 1977 – Apple Computer is incorporated.

I was a child growing up in the 70s and 1977 always sends chills down my spine when I remember that year.

To me it was "the" year in my life, if I ever had a favourite year, where so much seemed to happen on a personal and pop-cultural level.

And it wasn't because 'Star Wars' came out that year, or that 'Rocky' won the 'Best Picture' Oscar either.

My favourite films that year were 'Capricorn One', 'Network' and 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind'.

We didn't get 'Network' at the cinema until 1977 in Australia, so to me it was a 1977 film.

Yes, to me 1977 was a much more interesting time than 1967.

Seems like the 40-year anniversaries this year will give the 50-year anniversaries a run for their pop-cultural money and significance.

Not that Turkey will get to hear about it though, it seems;-) 

Where's the Fun in Eating Hemp Protein Now That it's Legal?

When this stuff wasn't legal I would eat it for breakfast, sprinkle it on my Vegemited toast, pour it into my orange juice, so it would look suspiciously a wee bit green ... except on St.Patrick's Day when it looked like I was drinking a cup full of blended mower clippings.
But after reading this news story today -
Hemp food products approved for human consumption in Australia and New Zealand

"It will soon be legal to consume hemp food products in Australia and New Zealand, after a landmark decision made in South Australia.

An ongoing campaign to change food regulations culminated in a meeting of federal and state food ministers today, where it was decided low-THC hemp seeds were fit for human consumption.
To be clear, hemp foods sold in Australia are low enough in THC (the hallucinogenic substance found in marijuana) that you can't get high from eating them.
Before today, hemp fell under a classification that prohibits all species of cannabis from being added to food, or sold as a food.

The change should come into effect in both countries in about six months' time." 

Snap, crackle, BUURRRPP!!!

Looks like I'll have to go back to beer with extra bubbles and acid sprinkles in the mornings to get my not so legal kicks again.

But don't worry, I'll take it easy on the Rice Bubbles, as I know that's not a real good way to start the day;-)

 Coke/cane

And if I get sick of having beer on my Rice Bubbles, I can always mix them with Coke/cane and hope I have to explain that to a snooping government food inspector.

Cheers.

But seriously, it's about time the Australian government woke up to their stupid food laws on hemp products with no drug content in it and for those guys in South Australia who have paved the way for those crazy laws to come to an end I and many others salute you.

1967: The Present Can Only Be Viewed from the Past?

Wins the Eurovision Song Contest 1967
for the United Kingdom

Chris Knowles of 'The Secret Sun' blog wrote a post a while back -

The Present Can Only Be Viewed from the Past

about 2017 being a year of significant anniversaries,

"2017 might seem like the hangover after a particularly-nasty meth, glue and Thunderbird bender, but it's actually a year of major anniversaries.

We're coming up on the 70th Anniversary of Kenneth Arnold and Roswell (as well as the National Security Act), the 50th Anniversary of Sgt. Pepper and the Summer of Love and the centennial of the Russian Revolution.

But there are a lot more observances, all kinds of 'ennials to observe.
I thought I'd dig into a few anniversaries germane to The Secret Sun and the topics we look at here. 

Readers are encouraged to weigh in with their own (observations that can be counted in multiples of five and ten, that is) in the comments.

December will see the fifth anniversary of the 2012 apocalypse/ascension/absurdity (depending on your point of view). 

Needless to say, most of us are still here and the skies didn't open and Nibiru didn't come crashing into the moon. 

So there goes another apocalypse.
I can't help but wonder about the 2012 meme, though.

As I wrote a couple years back, it certainly seems like something changed that year, that the bottom fell out somewhere, but no one seemed to notice it at the time.
I mean, Donald Trump is sitting in the White House, isn't he?

If even you're a Trump supporter you have to admit this would have seemed impossible five years ago.
Maybe the Apocalypse works on a different timeline than it does in the movies.

Maybe we're living in one only we can't see the forest fire for the burning trees.

History can only be written from a distance.

2007 was the year Our Gods Wear Spandex was published and the year I began actively blogging on this site, so Happy Ten Year Anniversary to me. 

It's also the year that a newly-elected Senator - with a weird, oblique connection to the Council of Nine - announced his candidacy for President."

I truly believe deeply on a subconscious level anyway, that Chris is spot on the money about the significance of the major anniversaries happening this year going back especially in decade blocks and probably no year more significant that 1967 and all the fifty-year anniversaries taking place this year.
Oh ... and if you look at the Amazon link to get to Chris Knowles' book 
https://www.amazon.com/Our-Gods-Wear-Spandex-History/dp/1578634067
notice what two numbers the link ends on?-)

And I'm not just writing this post because of my favourite football team celebrating their 50 year anniversary in 2017 (hopefully with a back-to-back premiership at the end of it, too).

I was turning three in the September of 1967, so while I was alive then, it was hardly a year that I remember, but it would pop-culturally reverberate throughout and profoundly effect my life, just as it has for significant chunks of the world's living population.

I think it is quite jaw dropping when looking back to what happened in 1967 from the vantage point of 2017 pop-culture ... and I'm only looking at an obvious minute fraction of things that happened from that year.

I think the other decades (1977, 1987, 1997, 2007) deserve a post each, so this post is going to just pick out a few points of interest from the big daddy of them all, 1967 and you can throw them under your own microscope and see if it's worth taking a closer look, but I think some things that happened that year a worth a peek and I'm sure there are plenty more that I've missed, or glossed over. 

"1967 (MCMLXVII) was a common year starting on Sunday (dominical letter A) of the Gregorian calendar, the 1967th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 967th year of the 2nd millennium, the 67th year of the 20th century, and the 8th year of the 1960s decade."

January 1 – Canada begins a year-long celebration of the 100th anniversary of the British North America Act, 1867, featuring the Expo 67 World's Fair.

January 2 – Ronald Reagan, past movie actor and future President of the United States, is inaugurated the new governor of California.

January 4 – The Doors release their début album The Doors.

January 12 – Dr. James Bedford becomes the first person to be cryonically preserved with the intent of future resuscitation.

January 15 Louis Leakey announces the discovery of pre-human fossils in Kenya; he names the species Kenyapithecus africanus.

The United Kingdom enters the first round of negotiations for European Economic Community membership in Rome.

January 18 A Fistful of Dollars, the first significant "spaghetti Western" film, is released in the United States.

An 'Eyes Wide Shut' scene filmed in a
 mansion in Milton Keynes, England 

January 23 Milton Keynes (England) is founded as a new town by Order in Council, with a planning brief to become a city of 250,000 people. 
Its initial designated area enclosed three existing towns and twenty one villages. 
The area to be developed was largely farmland, with evidence of permanent settlement dating back to the Bronze Age.

January 27 Apollo 1: U.S. astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward Higgins White, and Roger Chaffee are killed when fire breaks out in their Apollo spacecraft during a launch pad test.

The United States, Soviet Union and United Kingdom sign the 
Outer Space Treaty.

February 18 – New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison claims he will solve the John F. Kennedy assassination, and that a conspiracy was planned in New Orleans.

February 22 Suharto takes power from Sukarno in Indonesia 
(see Transition to the New Order and Supersemar).

March 5 – Mohammad Mosaddegh (or Mosaddeq; Persian: مُحَمَد مُصَدِق‎‎; IPA: [mohæmˈmæd(-e) mosædˈdeɣ] ( listen)), deposed Iranian prime minister, dies after fourteen years of house arrest.

March 12 The Velvet Underground's groundbreaking first album, The Velvet Underground & Nico, is released in the United States.
It is initially a commercial failure but receives widespread critical and commercial acclaim in later years.

March 14 (American Pi[e] Day?-) The body of U.S. President 
John F. Kennedy is moved to a permanent burial place at
Arlington National Cemetery.

March 18 The classic Pirates of the Caribbean attraction opens at Disneyland, California.
March 21 Charles Manson is released from Terminal Island. 
Telling the authorities that prison had become his home, he requested permission to stay. 
Upon his release, he relocates to San Francisco
where he spends the Summer of Love.

April 8 – Puppet on a String by Sandie Shaw
(music and lyrics by Bill Martin and Phil Coulter) wins the Eurovision Song Contest 1967 for the United Kingdom.

April 10 The AFTRA strike is settled just in time for the 39th Academy Awards ceremony to be held, hosted by Bob Hope.
Best Picture goes to A Man for All Seasons.
By the way, 'A Man for All Seasons' starred John Hurt, who passed away in 2017 (not quite fifty years after this film won the best picture Oscar).

April 10 Oral arguments begin in the landmark Supreme Court of the United States case Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967), challenging the State of Virginia's statutory scheme to prevent marriages between persons solely on the basis of racial classifications.

Inaugural Program 1967

April 12 – The Ahmanson Theatre opens in Los Angeles.

April 14 – In San Francisco, 10,000 march against the Vietnam War.
April 15 Large demonstrations are held against the Vietnam War in New York City and San Francisco. 

The march, organized by the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, from Central Park to the United Nations drew hundreds of thousands of people, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Harry Belafonte, James Bevel, and Dr. Benjamin Spock, who marched and spoke at the event.

A simultaneous march in San Francisco was attended by Coretta Scott King.
Scotland defeats England 3-2 at Wembley Stadium, with goals from Law, Lennox and McCalligog, in the British Championships.
This is England's first defeat since they won the World Cup, and ends a 19-game unbeaten run.

Surveyor 3 on the moon April 1967

April 20 The Surveyor 3 probe lands on the Moon
"Surveyor 3 was the third lander of the American uncrewed Surveyor program sent to explore the surface of the Moon. 

Launched on April 17, 1967, Surveyor 3 landed on April 20, 1967, at the Mare Cognitum portion of the Oceanus Procellarum (S3° 01' 41.43" W23° 27' 29.55"). 

It transmitted a total of 6,315 TV images to the Earth."

The real man who fell to earth?

April 24 Soyuz 1: Vladimir Komarov becomes the first Soviet cosmonaut to die, when the parachute of his space capsule fails during re-entry.

"Soyuz 1 (Russian: Союз 1 , Union 1) was a manned spaceflight of the Soviet space program. Launched into orbit on 23 April 1967 carrying cosmonaut Colonel Vladimir Komarov, 

Soyuz 1 was the first crewed flight of the Soyuz spacecraft.

The mission plan was complex, involving a rendezvous with Soyuz 2 and an exchange of crew members before returning to Earth.

However, the launch of Soyuz 2 was called off due to thunderstorms.
The flight was plagued with technical issues, and Komarov was killed when the descent module crashed into the ground due to a parachute failure.

This was the first in-flight fatality in the history of spaceflight."

April 24 In the NBA, the Philadelphia 76ers defeat the 
San Francisco Warriors 125-122 in game six to win the title. 
Some say this team is arguably the greatest of all time.

April 27 – Montreal, Quebec, Expo 67, a World's Fair to coincide with the Canadian Confederation centennial, officially opens with Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson igniting the Expo Flame in the Place des Nations.

Houston, we have a problem?

April 28 In Houston, Texas, boxer Muhammad Ali refuses military service. 

He is stripped of his boxing title and barred from professional boxing for the next three years.
Expo 67 opens to the public, with over 310,000 people attending. 

Al Carter from Chicago is the first visitor as noted by Expo officials.
The U.S. aerospace manufacturer McDonnell Douglas is formed through a merger of McDonnell Aircraft and Douglas Aircraft 

(it becomes part of The Boeing Company three decades later).
April 30 – Moscow's 537m-tall TV tower is finished.

The tower on fire on 27 August 2000

May 1 (May Day?!)
Elvis Presley and Priscilla Beaulieu are married in Las Vegas.
And in one decade later (1977) Elvis would be dead.

May 2 Harold Wilson announces that the United Kingdom has decided to apply for EEC membership.

And 50 years later (2017) they want out of the EU.

Lunar Orbiters photographed the Moon

May 4 – Lunar Orbiter 4 is launched by the United States.

"Lunar Orbiter 4 was an unmanned US spacecraft, part of the Lunar Orbiter Program, designed to orbit the Moon, after the three previous orbiters had completed the required needs for Apollo mapping and site selection.

It was given a more general objective, to "perform a broad systematic photographic survey of lunar surface features in order to increase the scientific knowledge of their nature, origin, and processes, and to serve as a basis for selecting sites for more detailed scientific study by subsequent orbital and landing missions". 

It was also equipped to collect selenodetic, radiation intensity, and micrometeoroid impact data." 

These orbiters were good little machines and I bet they would come in handy if say for some reason like if you couldn't fly a man through deadly radiation belts that might be situated between the earth and the moon;-)

May 6 Hong Kong 1967 riots: Clashes between striking workers and police kill 51 and injure 800.

May 18 NASA announces the crew for the Apollo 7 space mission (first manned Apollo flight): Walter M. Schirra, Jr., Donn F. Eisele, and R. Walter Cunningham.

The crew of Apollo 7 transmitted the first live broadcast television aboard an American manned spacecraft.

May 27 The Australian referendum, 1967 passes with an overwhelming 90% support, removing, from the Australian Constitution, 2 discriminatory sentences referring to Indigenous Australians. 
It signifies Australia's first step in recognising Indigenous rights.

June 1 – The Beatles release Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, nicknamed "The Soundtrack of the Summer of Love"; it will be number one on the albums charts throughout the summer of 1967.

June 5 Six-Day War begins: Israel launches Operation Focus, a preemptive strike on Egyptian Air Force bsir fields; the allied armies of Egypt Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and Iraq invade Israel. Battle of Ammunition Hill, start of the Jordanian campaign
June 8 USS Liberty incident
June 10 Six-Day War ends: Israel and Syria agree to a United Nations-mediated cease-fire.
The Soviet Union severs diplomatic relations with Israel.
Margrethe, heir apparent to the throne of Denmark, marries French count Henri de Laborde de Monpezat.
June 12 Loving v. Virginia: The United States Supreme Court declares all U.S. state laws prohibiting interracial marriage to be unconstitutional.
Venera program: Venera 4 is launched by the Soviet Union (the first space probe to enter another planet's atmosphere and successfully return data).
June 14 – Mariner program: Mariner 5 is launched toward Venus.
June 17 – The People's Republic of China tests its first hydrogen bomb
June 23 – Cold War: U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson meets with Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin in Glassboro, New Jersey, for the 3-day Glassboro Summit Conference. Johnson travels to Los Angeles for a dinner at the Century Plaza Hotel where earlier in the day thousands of war protesters clashed with L.A. police

June 25 – 400 million viewers watch Our World, the first live, international, satellite television production. It features the live debut of The Beatles' song "All You Need Is Love".
June 26 Pope Paul VI ordains 27 new cardinals (one of whom is the future Pope Saint John Paul II).

June 27 – The first automatic cash machine (voucher-based) is installed, in the office of Barclays Bank in Enfield, England.

June 28 – Israel declares the annexation of East Jerusalem.
July 1 Canada celebrates its first one hundred years of Confederation.
The first UK colour television broadcasts begin on BBC2. The first one is from the Wimbledon tennis championships. A full colour service begins on BBC2 on December 2.

July 4 – The British Parliament decriminalizes homosexuality.

July 10 Heavy massive rains and a landslide at Kobe and Kure, Hiroshima, Japan, kill at least 371.
New Zealand decimalises its currency from pound to dollar at £1 to $2 ($1 = 10/-).

July 14 The Bee Gees release their first international album Bee Gees' 1st in the UK.

The Bee Gees would also bring out a cover album and movie nearly ten years later which would tank.

July 16 – A prison riot in Jay, Florida leaves 37 dead.
July 23 – July 31 – 12th Street Riot: In Detroit, one of the worst riots in United States history begins on 12th Street in the predominantly African American inner city: 43 are killed, 342 injured and 1,400 buildings burned.

July 29 An explosion and fire aboard the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Forrestal in the Gulf of Tonkin leaves 134 dead.
An earthquake in Caracas, Venezuela leaves 240 dead.

Now in 2017 we have deadly riots going on in Venezuela

July 30 – The 1967 Milwaukee race riots begin, lasting through August 3 and leading to a ten-day shutdown of the city from August 1.

August 5 – Pink Floyd releases their debut album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn in the United Kingdom.

August 6 – A pulsar is noted by Jocelyn Bell and Antony Hewish. The discovery is first recorded in print in 1968: "An entirely novel kind of star came to light on Aug. 6 last year [...]". The date of the discovery is not recorded.

"A pulsar (from pulse and -ar as in quasar) is a highly magnetized, rotating neutron star or white dwarf, that emits a beam of electromagnetic radiation.

This radiation can be observed only when the beam of emission is pointing toward Earth (much the way a lighthouse can be seen only when the light is pointed in the direction of an observer), and is responsible for the pulsed appearance of emission.

Neutron stars are very dense, and have short, regular rotational periods.

This produces a very precise interval between pulses that range from milliseconds to seconds for an individual pulsar" 

August 14 – Wonderful Radio London shuts down at 3:00 PM in anticipation of the Marine Broadcasting Offences Act. 

Many fans greet the staff upon their return to London that evening with placards reading "Freedom died with Radio London."
August 15 – The United Kingdom Marine Broadcasting Offences Act declares participation in offshore pirate radio illegal. 

Radio Caroline defies the Act and continues broadcasting.
August 27 Beatles manager Brian Epstein is found dead in his locked bedroom.

September 1st Ilse Koch, known as the "Witch of Buchenwald", commits suicide in the Bavarian prison of Aichach.

September 5 – The television series The Prisoner has its world broadcast premiere on the CTV Television Network in Canada.

September 18 – Love Is a Many Splendored Thing debuts on U.S. daytime television and is the first soap opera to deal with an interracial relationship.

CBS censors find it too controversial and ask for it to be stopped, causing show creator Irna Phillips to quit.

October 3 – An X-15 research aircraft with test pilot William J. Knight establishes an unofficial world fixed-wing speed record of Mach 6.7.

October 4 The Shag Harbour UFO incident occurs.

October 6 – Southern California's Pacific Ocean Park closes down, known as the "Disneyland By The Sea".

October 8 – Guerrilla leader Che Guevara and his men are captured in Bolivia; they are executed the following day.

October 12 Desmond Morris publishes The Naked Ape.

October 17 The musical Hair opens off-Broadway. It moves to Broadway the following April.

October 18 Walt Disney's 19th full-length animated feature The Jungle Book, the last animated film personally supervised by Disney, is released and becomes an enormous box-office and critical success.

October 20 – Patterson–Gimlin film: Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin's famous film of an unidentified animate cryptid, thought to be Bigfoot or Sasquatch, is recorded at Bluff Creek, California.
October 21 Approximately 70,000 Vietnam War protesters march in Washington, D.C. and rally at the Lincoln Memorial; in a successive march that day, 50,000 people march to the Pentagon, where Allen Ginsberg, Abbie Hoffman, and Jerry Rubin symbolically chant to "levitate" the building and "exorcise the evil within."

November 2 – Vietnam War: U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson holds a secret meeting with a group of the nation's most prestigious leaders ("the Wise Men") and asks them to suggest ways to unite the American people behind the war effort. 

They conclude that the American people should be given more optimistic reports on the progress of the war.

November 9 – Apollo program: NASA launches the first Saturn V rocket, successfully carrying the unmanned Apollo 4 test spacecraft from Cape Kennedy into Earth orbit.

November 15 Test pilot Michael Adams is killed when his X-15 rocket plane tumbles out of control during atmospheric re-entry and disintegrates.

November 27 – The Beatles release Magical Mystery Tour in the U.S. as a full album. 

The songs added to the original six songs on the double EP include "All You Need Is Love", "Penny Lane", "Strawberry Fields Forever", "Baby, You're a Rich Man" and "Hello, Goodbye". 

Release as a double EP will not take place in the UK until December.

November 28 – The first pulsar named PSR B1919+21 was discovered in the constellation of Vulpecula by Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Antony Hewish.

RMS Queen Mary in Long Beach, California

December 1st The RMS Queen Mary is retired. 

Her place is taken by the RMS Queen Elizabeth 2.

December 3 – Christiaan Barnard carries out the world's first heart transplant at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa.

December 4 At 6:50 PM, a volcano erupts on Deception Island in Antarctica;-)

December 8 – Magical Mystery Tour is released by The Beatles as a double EP in the U.K., whilst the only psychedelic rock album by The Rolling Stones, Their Satanic Majesties Request, is released in the U.K and in the U.S.A.
December 11 – Supersonic airliner Concorde is unveiled in Toulouse, France.

December 12 – Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, one of the seminal race relations films of the 1960s, is released to theaters.

December 15 – The Silver Bridge over the Ohio River in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, collapses, killing 46 people. 

It has been linked to the so-called Mothman mystery.

17th Prime Minister of Australia

December 17 – Harold Holt, Australian prime minister, disappears when swimming at a beach 60 km from Melbourne.

December 19 – Professor John Archibald Wheeler uses the term black hole for the first time.

December 26 – The Beatles' film Magical Mystery Tour receives its world première on BBC Television in the UK

I still find the events of 1967 surprising...and they're just the ones that I know about.

A lost city is discovered on the island of Thera, buried under volcanic debris. 

It has been suggested that Plato may have heard legends about this, and used them as the germ of his story of Atlantis.

And James Christian "Jimmy" Kimmel (born November 13, 1967) came into the world in 1967 so he could ruin the 2017 Oscars for the cast of 'LA LA Land' and blame Warren for it;-)

At least there was no riot started on the night.

But could you imagine if 'Hacksaw Ridge' was given that Oscar by mistake?-)