***Geek Club History Draft***

[Voltaire 5,392]

OK skip 90sbaby, to Vudu.

 

Updated to 113.4

[iam90sbaby 2,720]

Alfred Nobel - thinker - Alfred Bernhard Nobel was a Swedish inventor, engineer and industrialist who had obtained a total of 355 patents in his lifetime. He was most well-known for inventing dynamite, and for developing some more powerful explosives and detonators to effectively ignite them. He built a network of almost a hundred factories all over the world to manufacture explosives and ammunition, and amassed a massive fortune from his businesses. In fact, at the time of his death, he was one of the wealthiest persons on the world. Since he was unmarried and childless, there were many speculations about the contents of his last will which he had signed on 27th November, 1895. The contents of his will caused a lot of disappointment to his much hopeful extended family as Nobel had left much of his wealth for the establishment of an international prize fund! As the inventor of dynamite, he had earned the sobriquet, ‘The Merchant of Death’ which deeply traumatized Nobel who was a pacifist at heart. He did not want to be remembered as the reason behind mass destruction after his death, and in order to redeem his posthumous reputation, he left the major portion of his wealth for the establishment of the Nobel Prizes to be awarded for eminence in five different fields, without any discrimination on basis of nationality.

 

 

Dmitri Mendeleev - thinker - Dmitri Mendeleev was a Russian chemist who greatly impacted the scientific community with his discovery of the periodic law and by successfully organizing the elements into the periodic table. His early life was marked by struggle and tragedy. By the time he was 21, he had lost his father and was suffering from tuberculosis. He buried himself in his scientific studies and went on to become a science professor. As a teacher, he realized that there was no comprehensive and complete textbook for his students. To correct this, he set out to publish a textbook that would provide a better learning experience for Russian students. He utilized his strong academic background, international scientific research and innovative theories to publish over 400 articles and books over his lifetime. Mendeleev, though best known for the periodic table, was also strongly interested in developing and improving Russia’s agricultural and industrial resources. He served as an advisor to the government, and he wrote several projects to develop the coal industry. He traveled throughout the Russian empire and even went to the United States to learn about petroleum. Near the end of his lifetime, he retired from teaching and turned his focus to metrology. In only a few short years, he published his own journal of metrology.

[vuduchile 1,945]

How many times have you found yourself reading a chapter or passage in a novel asking yourself, "how does he come up with this stuff?"

I do it constantly whenever i'm reading anything by Stephen King. Thinker.

IMO, his best works are not the horror stories.

[iam90sbaby 2,720]

I've almost pulled the trigger and drafted Stephen King the last 4-6 picks. Nice pick.

[Voltaire 5,392]

Bear then TBBOM.

[BiPolarBear 495]

When the Christian missionaries hit the shores of Hawaii, they started suppressing in ancient spiritual teachings of the indigenous people. The missionaries were basically, in ignorance, deigning the teachings of Christ. Here are the elements of Huna, the Polynesian philosophy of life along with Biblical references attributed to Jesus Christ:

http://www.huna.org/html/hgospel.html

Eleven years after the missionaries came to Hawaii, the Royal Hawaiian ruler outlawed all practices related to Huna. You have probably heard of the "Spirit of Aloha". Although "Aloha" is a common word used as a greeting and farewell, it is also a reference to the Huna philosophy and way of life. In modern times, there as been much interest in these teachings and a person who has led the way is Serge Kahili King.

http://www.sergeking.com/skbio.html

He has studied Hawaiian shamanism as well as African disciplines. Mr. King has compiled the most written information on Hana and lives what he teaches.

Serge Kahili King - Writer (non-fiction)

[titans&bucs&bearsohmy! 2,745]

The Kim family - Kim Ill Sung, Kim Jong-Il , and Kim Jong-Un - Wildcard

 

The Kim Dynasty fascinates me. These three fockers have pretty much literally blocked an entire society from contact with the outside world, and turned themselves into gods. The ridiculous stories and atrocities are well documented. Any dynasty so focking nuts that the Communist Chinese can barely put up with them deserves a spot on my roster.

 

Can you imagine what it must have been like growing up as Kim Jong-Un, the current Leader? This guy was raised in semi divinity. He literally could have any damn thing, or person, he wanted for whatever reason.

 

This guy executed his uncle. His crime? Falling asleep during one of kim's speeches. The method? Tied him to a focking anti aircraft gun. I mean, come on, that's just special focking crazy.

 

 

Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson, OM FRS^[1] (30 August 1871 – 19 October 1937) was a New Zealand-born British physicist who became known as the father of nuclear physics.^[2]Encyclopædia Britannica considers him to be the greatest experimentalist since Michael Faraday (1791–1867).^[2]

In early work he discovered the concept of radioactive half-life, proved that radioactivity involved the nuclear transmutation of one chemical element to another, and also differentiated and named alpha and beta radiation.^[3] This work was done at McGill University in Canada. It is the basis for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry he was awarded in 1908 "for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances",^[4] for which he is the first Canadian and Oceanian Nobel laureate, and remains the only laureate born in the South Island.

Rutherford moved in 1907 to the Victoria University of Manchester (today University of Manchester) in the UK, where he and Thomas Royds proved that alpha radiation is helium nuclei.^[5][6] Rutherford performed his most famous work after he became a Nobel laureate.^[4] In 1911, although he could not prove that it was positive or negative,^[7] he theorized that atoms have their charge concentrated in a very small nucleus,^[8] and thereby pioneered the Rutherford model of the atom, through his discovery and interpretation of Rutherford scattering in his gold foil experiment. He is widely credited with first "splitting the atom" in 1917 in a nuclear reaction between nitrogen and alpha particles, in which he also discovered (and named) the proton.^[9]

Rutherford became Director of the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge in 1919. Under his leadership the neutron was discovered by James Chadwick in 1932 and in the same year the first experiment to split the nucleus in a fully controlled manner, performed by students working under his direction, John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton. After his death in 1937, he was honoured by being interred with the greatest scientists of the United Kingdom, near Sir Isaac Newton's tomb in Westminster Abbey. The chemical element rutherfordium (element 104) was named after him in 1997.

[vuduchile 1,945]

The Kim family - Kim Ill Sung, Kim Jong-Il , and Kim Jong-Un - Wildcard

 

The Kim Dynasty fascinates me. These three fockers have pretty much literally blocked an entire society from contact with the outside world, and turned themselves into gods. The ridiculous stories and atrocities are well documented. Any dynasty so focking nuts that the Communist Chinese can barely put up with them deserves a spot on my roster.

 

Can you imagine what it must have been like growing up as Kim Jong-Un, the current Leader? This guy was raised in semi divinity. He literally could have any damn thing, or person, he wanted for whatever reason.

 

This guy executed his uncle. His crime? Falling asleep during one of kim's speeches. The method? Tied him to a focking anti aircraft gun. I mean, come on, that's just special focking crazy.

 

 

Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson, OM FRS^[1] (30 August 1871 19 October 1937) was a New Zealand-born British physicist who became known as the father of nuclear physics.^[2]Encyclopædia Britannica considers him to be the greatest experimentalist since Michael Faraday (17911867).^[2]

In early work he discovered the concept of radioactive half-life, proved that radioactivity involved the nuclear transmutation of one chemical element to another, and also differentiated and named alpha and beta radiation.^[3] This work was done at McGill University in Canada. It is the basis for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry he was awarded in 1908 "for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances",^[4] for which he is the first Canadian and Oceanian Nobel laureate, and remains the only laureate born in the South Island.

Rutherford moved in 1907 to the Victoria University of Manchester (today University of Manchester) in the UK, where he and Thomas Royds proved that alpha radiation is helium nuclei.^[5][6] Rutherford performed his most famous work after he became a Nobel laureate.^[4] In 1911, although he could not prove that it was positive or negative,^[7] he theorized that atoms have their charge concentrated in a very small nucleus,^[8] and thereby pioneered the Rutherford model of the atom, through his discovery and interpretation of Rutherford scattering in his gold foil experiment. He is widely credited with first "splitting the atom" in 1917 in a nuclear reaction between nitrogen and alpha particles, in which he also discovered (and named) the proton.^[9]

Rutherford became Director of the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge in 1919. Under his leadership the neutron was discovered by James Chadwick in 1932 and in the same year the first experiment to split the nucleus in a fully controlled manner, performed by students working under his direction, John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton. After his death in 1937, he was honoured by being interred with the greatest scientists of the United Kingdom, near Sir Isaac Newton's tomb in Westminster Abbey. The chemical element rutherfordium (element 104) was named after him in 1997.

A three man dynasty that rules a country over the course of 60 + years is ok, but the initial group of politicians who set up the Swiss democracy isn't?

 

What's the criteria for collaboration exactly?

 

They all need to have the same stupid haircut?

 

Or is it just whatever our China contingent decides it should be?

[Voltaire 5,392]

The youngest of the Kim stooges is already a dumb focking moron for Team Green.

 

And thank you for picking Rutherford. We're going to leave some great physicists on the FA wire, I'm glad he won't be one of them.

[titans&bucs&bearsohmy! 2,745]

A three man dynasty that rules a country over the course of 60 + years is ok, but the initial group of politicians who set up the Swiss democracy isn't?

 

What's the criteria for collaboration exactly?

 

They all need to have the same stupid haircut?

 

Or is it just whatever our China contingent decides it should be?

Ok I'll take Kim Jong Ill alone.

[Voltaire 5,392]

William Harvey - Doctor

 

William Harvey (1 April 1578 – 3 June 1657) was an English physician who made seminal contributions in anatomy and physiology. He was the first known to describe completely and in detail the systemic circulation and properties of blood being pumped to the brain and body by the heart, though earlier writers, such as Jacques Dubois, had provided precursors of the theory

 

[Voltaire 5,392]

Oh, here's a fun one.

 

 

 

His name is synonymous with 'womanizer'

 

Trained as a lawyer he only dabbled in the profession : "I should have been allowed to do as I wished and become a physician, in which profession quackery is even more effective than it is in legal practice."

 

He did spend time as a lawyer but also as an actor, priest, a soldier, an amateur doctor, a professional gambler, spy, playwright, conman, hung with the upper crust all over Europe and slept with innumerable rich women. Pulled off numerous schemes and scams. Earned the Papal Order of the Éperon d'or giving him a cross and medal to wear directly from the Pope himself. Dabbled in the occult. At one point he broke out of an 'inescapable' prison. Made and lost fortunes along the way.

 

You're going to want to read the wiki entry on his life, thoroughly entertaining...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giacomo_Casanova

 

Giacomo Casanova - Talk Show Guest

 

-----

 

To Bear

[BiPolarBear 495]

William James - Philosopher

 

From wiki:

 

William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher and psychologist who was also trained as a physician. The first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States,^[2] James was one of the leading thinkers of the late nineteenth century and is believed by many to be one of the most influential philosophers the United States has ever produced, while others have labelled him the "Father of American psychology".^[3][4][5] Along with Charles Sanders Peirce and John Dewey, he is considered to be one of the major figures associated with the philosophical school known as pragmatism, and is also cited as one of the founders of functional psychology. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked James as the 14th most cited psychologist of the 20th century.^[6] He also developed the philosophical perspective known as radical empiricism. James' work has influenced intellectuals such as Émile Durkheim, W. E. B. Du Bois, Edmund Husserl, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein,Hilary Putnam, and Richard Rorty,^[7] and has even influenced Presidents, such as Jimmy Carter.

Born into a wealthy family, James was the son of the Swedenborgian theologian Henry James Sr and the brother of both the prominent novelist Henry James, and the diarist Alice James. James wrote widely on many topics, including epistemology, education,metaphysics, psychology, religion, and mysticism. Among his most influential books are The Principles of Psychology, which was a groundbreaking text in the field of psychology, Essays in Radical Empiricism, an important text in philosophy, and The Varieties of Religious Experience, which investigated different forms of religious experience, which also included the then theories on Mind cure.^[8]

[vuduchile 1,945]

Writer - Fiction.

 

Larry McMurtry.

 

His Pulitzer Prize winning epic Lonesome Dove warrants consideration for top 5 novels of all time. It also inspired the greatest TV mini series ever made. If you've never read it, run, don't walk to your local library and check it out today.

 

His other works Include 3 more books in that series, plus The Last Picture Show, Texasville, Terms of Endearment (which inspired the movie that went on to win the academy award), Crazy Horse, Pretty Boy Floyd, Zeke and Ned and more.

[iam90sbaby 2,720]

Raphael - artist visual - was an Italian painter and architect. He was one of the major figures of the High Renaissance. A highly prolific artist who left behind an enormous collection of paintings at the time of his untimely death at the age of 37, he is best known for his paintings of Madonna and for his large figure compositions in the Palace of the Vatican in Rome. Born as the son of an artist, he received his early instruction in art from his father who worked as a court painter to the Duke. His father was an educated and cultured man, and under his guidance young Raphael was raised in an artistically and intellectually stimulating environment. Encouraged by his father, Raphael began painting at a young age and was placed under the training of the Umbrian master Pietro Perugino. However, life dealt a major blow to him when both his parents died within years of each other leaving him orphaned at the age of 11. He grew up to live a nomadic life, working in various centres in Northern Italy, probably spending a good deal of time in Florence as the influence of Florentine art is evident in his paintings.

 

 

Giotto - artist visual - was an Italian painter and architect from Florence in the late Middle Ages. He is generally considered the first in a line of great artists who contributed to the Renaissance.

Giotto's contemporary, the banker and chronicler Giovanni Villani, wrote that Giotto was "the most sovereign master of painting in his time, who drew all his figures and their postures according to nature. And he was given a salary by the Comune of Florence in virtue of his talent and excellence."^[1]

The late-16th century biographer Giorgio Vasari describes Giotto as making a decisive break with the prevalent Byzantine style and as initiating "the great art of painting as we know it today, introducing the technique of drawing accurately from life, which had been neglected for more than two hundred years."^[2]

Giotto's masterwork is the decoration of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, also known as the Arena Chapel, completed around 1305. This fresco cycle depicts the life of the Virgin and the life of Christ. It is regarded as one of the supreme masterpieces of the Early Renaissance.^[3] That Giotto painted the Arena Chapel and that he was chosen by the Comune of Florence in 1334 to design the new campanile (bell tower) of the Florence Cathedral are among the few certainties of his biography. Almost every other aspect of it is subject to controversy: his birthdate, his birthplace, his appearance, his apprenticeship, the order in which he created his works, whether or not he painted the famous frescoes at Assisi, and his burial place.

[Voltaire 5,392]

Raphael gone at 106.5

[iam90sbaby 2,720]

Cuno Amiet -artist visual - An important modernist artist, painter, illustrator, graphic artist and sculptor of the 19th century, Cuno Amiet is indeed a name to reckon with in Swiss art circle. The pioneer of modern art, Cuno Amiet paintings were all about colors and more colors. A member of the German expressionist group “Brucke”, much of Cunos work inspired by expressionism. Painting landscapes with winter themes, fruits and gardens, the artist went to create more than 4000 paintings, which included around 1000 portraits. Cuno had a brilliant palette and a loose technique of painting. An artist with a career spanning over a good 70 years and three centuries, Cuno's work was very rich, flamboyant and indeed eye-catching. Cuno was influenced by painters like Ferdinand Hodler, but he had his individualism and own style of being artsy. The biography indited below is an extension of Amiet's life and a reflection of his palette and the brilliance associated to it.

[vuduchile 1,945]

Talk show guest: Virginia Hall

 

British historian M. R. D. Foot called her an indomitable agent with a brass foot.[1] Special Operations Executive (SOE) officer Philippe de Vomécourt wrote that he served in France with this extraordinary woman . . . with a wooden leg.[2] French author Marcel Ruby said that she lost her leg in a riding accident.[3] Others had her losing a limb after falling under a tram.[4] Former CIA officer Harry Mahoney describes an OSS mission in which she parachuted behind enemy lines with her wooden leg in her knapsack.[5] Author and former OSS officer Elizabeth McIntosh wrote that she landed in France by boat.[6] The Gestapo put her likeness on a wanted poster. The British made her a Member of the British Empire. The United States awarded her the Distinguished Service Cross for extraordinary heroism in connection with military operations against the enemy, the only women to receive that medal for World War II service.[7]

 

If ever a career in intelligence cried out for a biography, Virginia Halls qualifies. Yet, in the 60 years since World War II, most histories of OSS fail to mention her.[8] Parts of her intriguing career have emerged gradually in articles and memoirs as official records became available. In the process, she has become something of a legend. When the British and American World War II intelligence archives were finally released in the 1980s and 1990s, it became possible to clarify contradictions and separate fact from fable. Author Judith Pearson has done that in The Wolves at the Door.

 

 

https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol49no4/Female_Spy_8.htm

[Voltaire 5,392]

Ok skip Bear. TBBOM can go.

[titans&bucs&bearsohmy! 2,745]

Hiram Maxim - Inventor

 

Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim (5 February 1840 – 24 November 1916) was an American-born inventor who moved from the United States to the United Kingdom at the age of 41. He remained an American citizen until he became a naturalised British subject in 1900.^[1][2] He was the inventor of the Maxim Gun – the first portable, fully automatic machine gun^[3] – and held patents on mechanical devices such as a mousetrap, hair-curling irons, and steam pumps.^[4] He laid claim to inventing the lightbulb,^[5] and even experimented with powered flight, but his large aircraft designs were never successful.^[6] However, his "Captive Flying Machine" amusement ride, designed as a means by which to fund his research while generating public interest in flight, was highly successful

 

 

Maxim was reported to have said: "In 1882 I was in Vienna, where I met an American whom I had known in the States. He said: 'Hang your chemistry and electricity! If you want to make a pile of money, invent something that will enable these Europeans to cut each others' throats with greater facility.'"^[18]

 

As a child, Maxim had been knocked over by a rifle's recoil, and this inspired him to use that recoil force to automatically operate a gun. Between 1883 and 1885 Maxim patented gas, recoil and blowback methods of operation. After moving to England, he settled in a large house formerly owned by Lord Thurlow in West Norwood where he developed his design for an automatic weapon, using an action that would close the breech and compress a spring, by storing the recoil energy released by a shot to prepare the gun for its next shot. He thoughtfully ran announcements in the local press warning that he would be experimenting with the gun in his garden and that neighbours should keep their windows open to avoid the danger of broken glass.^[21]

Maxim founded an arms company with financial backing from Edward Vickers to produce his machine gun in Crayford, Kent, which later merged with Nordenfeldt. Subsequently, part of the Barrow Shipbuilding Company purchase by Vickers Corporation in 1897, formed 'Vickers, Son & Maxim'. Their improved development of the Maxim gun design, the Vickers machine gun, after Maxim's resignation from the board in 1911 on his 71st birthday, was the standard British machine gun for many years. With arms sales led by Basil Zaharoff, variants of the Maxim gun were bought and used extensively by both sides during World War I.

In his later years Maxim became profoundly deaf, as his hearing had been damaged by years of exposure to the noise of his guns.^[22]

 

^________

 

 

Vortigern - dumb focking moron

 

Vortifern was King of Britain in 440 AD. He constantly had trouble defending his kingdom against raids from the Picts and Scots to the north (You know, those pesky fockers that necessitated Hadrians Wall being built). The britons, long civilized by Roman influence, weren't particularly warlike you see.

 

He had an idea. He sent emissaries across the sea to Germany, and hired bands of Angles and Saxons to come to Britain and defend his kingdom for him.

 

Predictably, once the mercenaries realized that they were the only warriors in the whole country, they simply took over, and invited their friends back home. Over the next century, hundreds of thousands of Angles and Saxons poured in, and the country remained under the rule of the Saxons until the Battle of Hastings some six centuries later.

[Voltaire 5,392]

Alexis de Toqueville - Talk Show Guest

 

From the perspective of a French aristocrat in the post-Napoleon era, he me made some incredibly astute observations about liberty in America during a visit and upon returning helped usher in the transition from aristocracy to democracy in Europe.

 

Klemens von Metternich - Wildcard

 

Kind of the other end of that. Metternich was a contemporary of Toqueville and an Austrian conservative dedicated to upholding the old order against the liberal impulses. One of the most important diplomats of his era, he was the chairman of the Congress of Vienna, maestro of the Concert of Europe that mostly kept the peace in years following the Napoleonic era.

[Voltaire 5,392]

To Bear.

 

I should do an update now while I'm at home but- nah - it's late. I also don't want to get out of bed, I'm warm under my blanket. Around 6 PM tomorrow China time, another 20 hours from this post, I'll do my next update.

[Voltaire 5,392]

 

 

 

 

In his later years Maxim became profoundly deaf, as his hearing had been damaged by years of exposure to the noise of his guns.^[22]

 

 

Should have invented earplugs too. A lot less complicated to design.

[BiPolarBear 495]

Ok skip Bear. TBBOM can go.

 

I think I sent you a pick a few days ago.

 

Saint Francis of Assisi - Philosopher

 

If you have it, please post my info on him. Thank you.

[Voltaire 5,392]

Yeah that's right. I'd made another mistake too. You can go again.

 

Saint Thomas Aquinas - Philosopher

 

St. Thomas Aquinas (AKA Thomas of Aquin or Aquino) (c. 1225 - 1274) was an Italian philosopher and theologian of the Medieval period. He was the foremost classical proponent of natural theology at the the peak of Scholasticism in Europe, and the founder of the Thomistic school of philosophy and theology.

 

The philosophy of Aquinas has exerted enormous influence on subsequent Christian theology, especially that of the Roman Catholic Church, but also Western philosophy in general. His most important and enduring works are the "Summa Theologica", in which he expounds his systematic theology of the "quinquae viae" (the five proofs of the existence of God), and the "Summa Contra Gentiles".

 

----

 

Still Bear. I'd messed up.

[BiPolarBear 495]

Richard Pryor - Wildcard

 

 

I think the reason I am so hard on comedy is because of this guy. I love a good comedy movie, but my standards are too high. Nobody touches Richard Pryor, in my opinion.

 

The following joke has vulgar language and is NSFW.

 

[Voltaire 5,392]

Richard Pryor - Wildcard

 

 

I think the reason I am so hard on comedy is because of this guy. I love a good comedy movie, but my standards are too high. Nobody touches Richard Pryor, in my opinion.

 

The following joke has vulgar language and is NSFW.

 

In the "If your life could be a movie" thread, my entry was Brewster's Millions so I just had Pryor on my mind.

[Voltaire 5,392]

Updated to 117.3 to Vudu then 90sbaby

[vuduchile 1,945]

100 years from now, Bob Dylan and Paul Simon will be mentioned in the same breath as the other great poets because that's what they are. Except, Dylan and Simon are a million times better. They combined their amazing prose with equally amazing rythyms and melodies.

 

Paul Simon - Poet.

[iam90sbaby 2,720]

Jerry Garcia - Artist (performing) - was an American musician and guitarist, best known as one of the co-founders of the rock band, The Grateful Dead. The rock band, formed in the mid-1960s was known for its unique and eclectic style which combined elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, and psychedelia. He rose to prominence as the group’s lead guitarist and vocalist during the counterculture era and was also considered by some to be the spokesman of the extremely popular band. For around three decades The Grateful Dead ruled over the hearts of music lovers not just in America, but all over the world. Having gained a reputation for himself as the co-founder of the extremely famous musical group, Jerry Garcia also became involved in other projects alongside, the most notable being the Jerry Garcia Band. He had a very close friendship with the bluegrass mandolinist David Grisman and often collaborated to play with him. For all his creativity and talent, Garcia had a dark side—he was a heavy smoker and addicted to drugs. A diabetic, his health suffered greatly because of his addictions and deteriorated in the 1990s. He died of a heart attack in 1995, at the age of just 53.

 

 

F. Scott Fitzgerald - Writer (fiction) - The American author Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was without a doubt among the greatest authors of the 20th century and is still regarded as among the finest authors to have been produced by the USA. Fitzgerald was a product of the period that was better known as the Jazz Age in the 1920s and excelled in writing short stories and novels. Writers from all over the world and his contemporaries, all considered him to be a writer of exquisite quality and it is not a wonder that he is still revered by devotees of literature and casual readers alike. “Fitzgerald was a better just plain writer than all of us put together. Just words writing”, wrote John O’ Hara to another famous American writer John Steinbeck and similar sentiments have been expressed by plenty of authors, critics, readers and scholars alike over the past decades. Although F. Scott Fitzgerald is primarily known as a great novelist, it should not be forgotten that he started off his writing career as a short story writer and wrote plenty of critically acclaimed stories. In addition to that, he has also written poems and that is something that makes him a versatile literary genius. Keep reading to know more about the life and works of this accomplished writer.

[vuduchile 1,945]

Dumb Focking Morons Henry Smolinski and his partner, Hal Blake, founded Advanced Vehicle Engineers in 1971, expressly to design and build a flying car. Their one and only product was the AVE Mizar and it wasn't a design that allowed you to take to the air if you hit a traffic jam on the highway.Instead, it was a simply a car that a person could attach wings to, fly up into the air at a local airport, come down a few hundred miles away at another airport, stick the wings in the trunk, and head out down the road.

 

The prototypes of the car were made by sawing up a Cessna Skymaster airplane and a Ford Pinto, and putting them together. The controls were adapted so that they drove the car on the ground and the plane in the air. The fact that they managed it at all was an impressive feat, and even though the engine failed on their first flight, they landed the Mizar and drove it back to the airport. The combination of imagination, determination, and bravado was a hit and in early 1973, the Mizar was considered to be the new automotive sensation.

 

It wasn't until late 1973 that Smolinski and Blake discovered there was a problem with a plane whose wings were designed to come off. The pair were going down the driveway on a routine flight of the Mizar, when the Cessna wings detached from the car. This left the two inventors in mid-air in a Pinto.

 

The two inventors were killed, and the idea was completely scrapped. The idea that today there could be Pintos swooping and turning over our heads like combustible pterodactyls is both wonderful and terrible. While hindsight is twenty-twenty, it is, perhaps, understandable to allow a moment of silence not just for the two men that died, but for the kooky idea that died with them.

[Voltaire 5,392]

Dumb Focking Morons Henry Smolinski and his partner, Hal Blake, founded Advanced Vehicle Engineers in 1971, expressly to design and build a flying car. Their one and only product was the AVE Mizar and it wasn't a design that allowed you to take to the air if you hit a traffic jam on the highway.Instead, it was a simply a car that a person could attach wings to, fly up into the air at a local airport, come down a few hundred miles away at another airport, stick the wings in the trunk, and head out down the road.

 

The prototypes of the car were made by sawing up a Cessna Skymaster airplane and a Ford Pinto, and putting them together. The controls were adapted so that they drove the car on the ground and the plane in the air. The fact that they managed it at all was an impressive feat, and even though the engine failed on their first flight, they landed the Mizar and drove it back to the airport. The combination of imagination, determination, and bravado was a hit and in early 1973, the Mizar was considered to be the new automotive sensation.

 

It wasn't until late 1973 that Smolinski and Blake discovered there was a problem with a plane whose wings were designed to come off. The pair were going down the driveway on a routine flight of the Mizar, when the Cessna wings detached from the car. This left the two inventors in mid-air in a Pinto.

 

The two inventors were killed, and the idea was completely scrapped. The idea that today there could be Pintos swooping and turning over our heads like combustible pterodactyls is both wonderful and terrible. While hindsight is twenty-twenty, it is, perhaps, understandable to allow a moment of silence not just for the two men that died, but for the kooky idea that died with them.

I think flying cars are good idea ... except for the safety issues you noted. Sadly nobody was around anymore to sort those out.

 

When I watched The Empire Strikes Back, I wanted one of those hover-motorcycle things even though everybody in the movies we saw riding one wrecked them by smacking into the redwood trees.

[vuduchile 1,945]

I think flying cars are good idea ... except for the safety issues you noted. Sadly nobody was around anymore to sort those out.

 

When I watched The Empire Strikes Back, I wanted one of those hover-motorcycle things even though everybody in the movies we saw riding one wrecked them by smacking into the redwood trees.

Ok George Jetson, make it happen.

 

Will you also be using a '71 Pinto as a fuselage?

[BiPolarBear 495]

Warwick E. Kerr - Dumb Mofo

 

Who's he?

 

Do you like honey? Would you rather have less honey and not get stung 10,000 times?

 

Yes, that's right, this is the biologist who gave us Killer Bees, a cross between a (sweet) European honey bee and honey bees from Africa. Now Warwick didn't intend to hurt anybody, but that is a plus in the dumb category. He even got some help from another visiting beekeeper dumbo who removed a screen to let a bunch of Africanized bees loose into the world.

 

[Voltaire 5,392]

Ok George Jetson, make it happen.

 

Will you also be using a '71 Pinto as a fuselage?

No, no. I'd have taken a car with tailfins that were a popular design in the late 50s and done some sort of Transformers type thing with folding/retractable wings on them rather than detachable ones. Not just beauty but also functionality. They look cool but they may have been too heavy to fly though. Even so, If I had to chose an early 70s subcompact economy class car to stick wings on, maybe a flying AMC Gremlin on a Volkswagon Beatle.

 

Although, in fairness, if you're flying, the Pinto may actually work as nobody really worries about rear end collisions when they're in the air.

 

There are some cool concept cars from the 50s that look like they should be able to fly.

[titans&bucs&bearsohmy! 2,745]

Ok. Here is one of my favorite guys in history that nobody has ever heard of.

 

Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim - JOAT

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Gustaf_Emil_Mannerheim

 

There is the link to the wiki if you want a longer read.

 

This guy was a nobleman of Swedish ancestry living in Finland, when Finland was a grand duchy of the Russian empire. Expelled from the Finnish military cadets, he joined the Russian army proper instead. He served in the Russo Japanese war, World War One, then in the Finnish civil war as a white, or pro royalist anti communist. It was at this point that Finland became a separate country.

 

He also served as a spy, making numerous trips on behalf of the tsars government to China, posing as an ethnographer, which he actually was pretty well versed in.

 

He later served as regent of Finland, and was marshal of Finland during World War II. You may remember the winter war. The episode in 1940 where the Soviet colossus invaded tiny Finland, and got their nose bloodied badly for quite a while? Mannerheim was Marshall of Finland commanding the defense, behind what is called the Mannerheim line. Ski troops, snipers, and little else focked the red army up for some time. Many say this poor showing is what gave hitler the idea that abandoning the Molotov Ribbentrop pact and invading the Soviet Union was feasible.

 

Mannerheim later became president of Finland. The national museum is named after him, and is basically a shrine to him.

[titans&bucs&bearsohmy! 2,745]

Robert Eracles - Talk Show guest

 

I really want to read a book, called the Tartar Kahn's Englishman, that tells this guys story. But it isn't in electronic format, and getting things shipped here is a b!tch.

 

Not much is known for sure. Much is speculation. But it appears this man was an English Knight who fought in the crusades. That alone would make a worth talk show guest.

 

But he pissed the English king off, and was sent packing. He eventually was picked up by talent scouts working for kublai khan. You see, our English friend was a gifted linguist.

 

He journeyed to Mongolia and observed the golden court firsthand. He was eventually sent back to Europe as a diplomat intelligence officer.

 

He was with the Mongol army during the conquest of Hungary, and was captured, recognized, and hung to death.

[Voltaire 5,392]

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk - Reformer

 

Atatürk is an honorific title meaning "Father of the Turks" given to him a few years before he died. Although he adopted 13 children, this is not why he got the name. He was a pretty important guy. One of the few Ottoman Generals who didn't get his ass kicked in WWI, he helped play a part in overthrowing the Ottomans. A committed secular liberal reformer, he was only briefly a part of the Young Turks (the ultra-nationalists that committed all the attrocities against the Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians) before he fell out of favor and overthrew them. (None of that genocide stink was on him) and began the long hard slog of turning Turkey into the only modern Muslim secular democracy in the heart of the Middle East.

[Voltaire 5,392]

Hans Bethe once said that Klaus Fuchs was the only physicist he knew who truly changed history.

 

He certainly did that. He was the Soviet spy present at Los Alomos who ensured that the Soviets would be able to build a bomb by August 1949.

 

Fuchs was a young man and lower ranking scientist at Los Alamos where he worked under Bethe. His chief area of expertise was the problem of imploding the fissionable core of the plutonium bomb. At one point, Fuchs did calculation work that Edward Teller had refused to do because of lack of interest. He was the author of techniques (such as the still-used Fuchs-Nordheim method) for calculating the energy of a fissile assembly that goes highly prompt critical and his report on blast waves is still considered a classic. Later, he also filed a patent with John von Neumann describing a method to initiate fusion in a thermonuclear weapon with an implosion trigger.Fuchs was one of the many Los Alamos scientists present at the Trinity Test. Bethe considered Fuchs "one of the most valuable men in my division" and "one of the best theoretical physicists we had."

 

in 1950, Fuchs admitted to being a spy. While the US executed Julius and Ethyl Rosenberg for treason for merely smuggling out Fuch's secrets, the Brits did things differently. He wasn't executed, they gave him a fourteen year sentence, reduced later to nine and stripped him of British citizenship.

 

He served nine years for providing expert testimony and giving away 90% of the recipe for a bomb to the Soviets while Ethyl Rosenberg was executed for maybe typing some of the stuff he passed along but mostly for being married to and collaborating with Julius.

 

After his sentence he emigrated to East Germany and became deputy director if the Institute for Nuclear Research in Rossendorf. He died in 1988 at age 76.

 

 

Klaus Fuchs - Criminal

[Voltaire 5,392]

TBBOM's two are in, it's to Bear