Monday Links from the Frenzy Vol. LXXXV

[NickFitz]

Aaargh! So much to do, so little time... otherwise I would have posted these ages ago. You lot get on with reading them; there'll be a test at the end:

• There's no looting in Tooting: social media and the riots - "It’d be too easy and tedious to point at the tulip-clasm playing out on Twitter, roll our collective eyes and say ‘how silly’. As 24-hour news tells us, we’re not safe – things are going to kick off, these people are scum... As the news-copter zooms in on some people in balaclavas looking disinterestedly at an upturned bin, we wonder – has the bin on my road been knocked over?" James Temperton on rumour mills grinding at the speed of light. Bonus linky: Watford Riots - A Guide by JPweasel, an amusing analysis of the Hertfordshire riots-that-never were: "The riot was going to march through South Oxhey, then down Bushey high street, hit Hemel Hempstead at 3, then Watford for 4. And these were ALL THE SAME PEOPLE. Never mind that they were walking for literally miles, THE RIOT WAS COMING. And worse, it was sticking to a timetable."
  
  
• “You’re Goddam Right I Remember” – Howard Hawks Interviewed - Kathleen Murphy's interview was first published in Movietone News in 1977: "Mr. Hawks, who had turned 80 just over a month before, had driven 350 miles the previous day, taking his son to and from a motorcycle meet in the desert; and he frequently kneaded a stiffening hand he’d once broken on Ernest Hemingway’s jaw. He talked. We talked."
  
  
• Teaching Grandmothers to Suck Eggs - "I love old ladies. I’ve rarely met a bad one. In fact, if I didn’t relish the prospect of being a pipe-smoking, Boo Radleyesque, grumpy, slightly stinky old man quite so much, I would like to have been one when I grow up. One thing has always troubled me, though: the idea that you can’t teach them (or, specifically, grandmothers) to suck eggs." The Gastronaut tests the theory, with real grandmothers.
  
  
• Flash mob at Copenhagen Central Station. Copenhagen Phil playing Ravel's Bolero. - "As one of the first professional symphony orchestras ever Copenhagen Phil (Sjællands Symfoniorkester) did a flash mob at Copenhagen Central Station on May 2nd 2011 playing Ravel's Bolero. Conductor is Jesper Nordin."
  
  
  
  
  
• 14 May 2011: Richard's Reactor - "My project is to build a working nuclear reactor. Not to gain electricity, just for fun and to see if it's possible to split atoms at home." 22 July 2011: Project canceled! - "Wednesday, I was arrested and sent to jail, when the police and the Swedish Radiation Safety Authory searched my apartment. They took all my radioactive stuff, but I was released after a hearing... I was ordered by the police to get out of the building with my hands up, then three men came, with geiger-counters and searched me. Then I was placed in a police-car, when Radiation Safety Authory went into my apartment with very advanced measure-tools. So, my project is canceled!"
  
  
• ‘Where Children Sleep’ - "As [photographer James Mollison] considered how to represent needy children around the world, he wanted to avoid the common devices: pleading eyes, toothless smiles. When he visualized his own childhood, he realized that his bedroom said a lot about what sort of life he led. So he set out to find others." Fascinating gallery.
  
  
• Accuracy takes power: one man's 3GHz quest to build a perfect SNES emulator - Byuu, creator of the bsnes emulator, explains why even the most powerful modern systems can struggle to fully emulate the hardware of yesteryear: "Take the case of DICE, the digital integrated circuit emulator. Here is an emulator that works at the transistor level for absolutely perfect recreation of the very first video games ever created. To run Pong at about 5-10fps, DICE requires a 3GHz processor. Yes, you read that right: no computer processor at this time that can run Pong at the circuit level at full speed. It's not that DICE is a slow program; indeed, it is very well optimized. It's that there is enormous overhead to simulating every last transistor propagation delay."
  
  
• Crime in Wartime - "In 1939 there had been just over 300,000 indictable offences known to the police in England and Wales. Over the next few years this figure was to increase dramatically." Spirit of the Blitz, revisited.
  
  
• Exposing a Fake Video Trick - "You know I love videos that may or may not be fake. It gets me pumped up. Ok, here is a video. It is almost certainly fake." Rhett Allain , associate professor of physics at Southeastern Louisiana University, demonstrates some quick and easy ways to use free software such as Tracker and a bit of maths to analyse video and detect shenanigans.
  
  
• Dear Photograph - "take a picture of a picture from the past in the present."

Happy invoicing!

[TimberWolf]

Sorry you got arrested. I'd like to build a thorium reactor in my back yard. All you need is a drum of monazite and a good neutron source. Power to the people.

[darmstadt]

• Accuracy takes power: one man's 3GHz quest to build a perfect SNES emulator - Byuu, creator of the bsnes emulator, explains why even the most powerful modern systems can struggle to fully emulate the hardware of yesteryear: "Take the case of DICE, the digital integrated circuit emulator. Here is an emulator that works at the transistor level for absolutely perfect recreation of the very first video games ever created. To run Pong at about 5-10fps, DICE requires a 3GHz processor. Yes, you read that right: no computer processor at this time that can run Pong at the circuit level at full speed. It's not that DICE is a slow program; indeed, it is very well optimized. It's that there is enormous overhead to simulating every last transistor propagation delay."

If you enjoyed that then the Visual 6502 project might be of interest...

[AlfredJPruffock]

Great Stuff Nic - hope the new role is going well ?

Crime in Wartime was my top read - makes Crime in PeaceTime a Walk in the Park !

Take a look at this :

Teenage blackout gangs became a common problem during the early stages of the war. In once incident, seventeen-year-old James Harvey, was beaten to death by a rival gang near the Elephant and Castle underground station. There was a public outcry when the court accepted the defendants claim that they had not intended to murder Harvey. Convicted of manslaughter, the three convicted gang members were only sentenced to three years, eighteen months and twelve months respectively.

And this surely would make an excellent Wartime Bonnie and Clyde true life documentary :

The most famous murder case of the war involved a deserter from the United States Army. On 3rd October 1944 Karl Hulten met Elizabeth Jones, a eighteen-year-old Welsh striptease dancer. On their first date they ended up using Hulten's stolen military truck to knock a young girl from her bike and stealing her handbag. The following day they gave a lift to a woman carrying two heavy suitcases. After stopping the car Hulten attacked the woman with an iron bar and then dumped her body in a river.

On 6th October the couple hailed a hire car on Hammersmith Broadway. When they reached a deserted stretch of road they asked the taxi driver to stop. Hulten then shot the driver in the head and stole his money and car. The following day they spent the money at White City dog track.

Jones now told Hulten she would like a fur coat. On 8th October they parked the stolen hire car outside Berkeley Hotel while they waited for a woman to emerge wearing a fur coat. Eventually Jones chose a white ermine coat worn by a woman leaving the hotel. Hulten attacked the woman but before he could get the coat a policeman arrived on the scene. Hulten managed to escape and drive off in his car. However, the following morning, Hulten was arrested as he got into the stolen hire car.

There was great public interest in the case of the GI gangster and his striptease dancer. The public was deeply shocked by the degree of violence the couple had used during their crime spree and it came as no surprise when both Karl Hulten and Elizabeth Jones were found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. Hulten was executed at Pentonville Prison on 8th March 1945 but Jones was reprieved at the last moment and was released in May 1954.


One of the most shocking crimes committed during wartime was the looting from bombed houses. In the first eight weeks of the London Blitz a total of 390 cases of looting was reported to the police. On 9th November, 1940, the first people tried for looting took place at the Old Bailey.

Of these twenty cases, ten involved members of the Auxiliary Fire Service.

And ... This caused some problems concerning the differences between the two country's legal system. For example, eight American servicemen were hanged in Britain after being found guilty of rape during the war.

PS when is the Test ?

[wobbegong]

Nice one Nick.

"Dear Photograph - "take a picture of a picture from the past in the present." - fantastic!!

[wobbegong]

"Where children sleep" is also very good.