The Internet: A repository for all things arcane.

Posted on February 11, 2014 by The Old Wolf

Edit 8/25/2015: This post was based on a link to Grooveshark, the most awesome music streaming service since Napster. Unfortunately, a number of circumstances led to their demise. I have added a new link to the song in question.

In a recent post I saw on Facebook, a friend of mine was sharing some thoughts about dealing with ADHD in children. I mentioned that I’ve had the problem since childhood, and that ultimately it never goes away – one simply has to deal with it. Another friend remarked that it was interesting how I have been able to channel mine into insatiable curiosity. This struck me, because I had never really made the connection in a conscious way, although I have long been aware that I have a burning need to know things.

The capsule summary of my senior year at Camp Wildwood in Bridgton, Maine, describes me as an energetic tripper despite my 85-lb bulk (I was tiny until I hit 11th grade), and mentioned that however unorganized my body of knowledge, I seemed to be an inexhaustible source of interesting bits of information. So you see, it had begun early, and never ended. I used to read the encyclopedia for fun.

Then came the Internet. By the holy skull of Mogg’s virgin aunt, it’s a miracle I get anything accomplished at all – but it’s both a blessing and a curse. I’ll have something rattling around in my mind, and before the days of Google, I had no way of locating, categorizing, elaborating on, or filing it away as “done” unless it could be found in a printed resource. But with the Internet, and billions of people contributing content on a daily basis, many of the things that I would never have been able to locate have actually shown up. I mentioned a few of them over here at “The Lost Cartoons” and “Vintage Toys I have Loved” (among many others) but there is always something which tasks me.

Today I got to put another one to rest.

Back in the 80s there was a wonderful radio station in Salt Lake called KKDS (or K-Kids). It played a constant stream of amazing and delightful music and features for children – the Chicago Tribune mentioned it, saying:

WPRD-AM, now broadcasting news from the CNN Headline News service, was the first affiliate for the Imagination Stations Network, which was based in Orlando and had hoped to broadcast nationally to at least 100 affiliates by the end of its first year. When it ceased broadcasting 11 months after it began, the network had only one other affiliate, KKDS in Salt Lake City.

I was sad to see it go, and our children loved it.

Remember the Sinclairs, stars of the TV show “Dinosaurs?”

One of the songs from that show that was played frequently on KKDS was “I Can Do Whatever I Want”. It has been available on a CD, but up until now, nowhere else. Believe me, I’ve looked. And I didn’t want to shell out $30.00 or more for just the one song that I liked. My wife will confirm that I liked the song, because I periodically sing the refrain when I’m feeling a bit contrary.

But when Grooveshark, one of the better online music services out there. was in its prime, my song – my cherished, silly song – finally showed up. So now I can file that little bit of ephemera away, I know it’s out there, I can listen to it whenever I want (’cause I’m a dinosaur!) and move on to the next 50 billion items.

Its a curse, but I’ve learned to live with it.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Tape Storage, 1977

Posted on February 7, 2014 by The Old Wolf

Found in Texas Monthly, 1977 Vol. 5, No. 11

This advertisement for Maxell media displays four very common tape formats from the 70s: clockwise from top, studio tape ^[1], 8-track tape, reel-to-reel tape, and cassette. Digital storage has, for all intents and purposes, obsoleted all of these. That said, some companies still offer tape backup solutions for companies which are looking for certain advantages.

For the most part, however, this is a forgotten technology among the young people of today, an entire generation of whom have never lived in a time when the Internet didn’t exist.

If you’re one of those youngsters and wonder, that pencil would come in really handy if you ever encountered a cassete that looked like this:

… which would happen with more frequency than you might wish, if your player was on the fritz.

Having grown up in the 50’s and 60’s, reel-to-reel was all I knew as a child; when the Tinico tape recorder ^[2] was introduced, I coveted one of these with a white-hot passion. It was one of the few things I begged for as a kid that I never got.

You can see this one in action, playing a speech by John F. Kennedy, at YouTube.

What I did get much later, as an adult, was the smallest Sony Walkman ever produced. It was designed to be exactly the size of a tape cassette in its case when closed – the lid would slide down about half an inch to accomodate a cassette:

Walkman, closed

‘

Walkman, open.

Size comparison

I still have mine in a drawer – time has taken its toll and it no longer works, but I got a lot of use out of it and it’s still fun to hold. It was manufactured, I think, as more of a novelty than a truly useful device, because the ultra-miniaturization of all the components meant elevated fragility as well.

It’s interesting to have some historical perspective on audio and computer media. As usual, it makes me wonder with insatiable curiosity what my granddaughters will have seen by the time they are my age.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

[1] I had originally called this computer tape; thanks to Salvador Virgen for pointing out that it was indeed something else, which I verified with an image search.

[2] The referenced article compares the Tinico recorder with a Soviet copy. I remember a joke my mother telling me back in the 60’s, which she in turn heard from a Russian emigrée friend of hers; it concerned a Soviet diplomat being given a tour of a technology display, and at every stop the Russian would say, “Oh, da – Russians invented that.” Finally he was handed an audio cassette, and he said, “Oh, da! Russians invented that! What is it?”

Mexico: 1916 Auto Wreck

Posted on February 6, 2014 by The Old Wolf

This picture is nearly 100 years old, and is titled “Car wreck on Tlalpan Road, 1916.” The exact location of the crash is not indicated, but for different reasons (and based on more photos) we conclude that it is on the current road between Huipulco and INER.

Photo: INAH
Tlalpan History

Selfie, 1920 Version.

Posted on February 6, 2014 by The Old Wolf

One of the earliest selfies, taken by principals of the Byron Company, in 1920.

Byron Company: Uncle Joe Byron, Pirie MacDonald, Colonel Marceau, Pop Core, Ben Falk-New York, 1920. Museum of the City of New York.

How the photo was taken:

Byron Company, Side view of Byron Co. photographers posing together for a photograph on the roof of Marceau’s Studio, 1920. Museum of the City of New York

More information can be found at the Museum of the City of New York.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

The defense and the illustration of the English Language.

Posted on February 4, 2014 by The Old Wolf

Not 1549, but 2014.

I previously wrote two articles, here and here, about the efforts of France (and Québec, since we’re on the subject) to keep their language unspotted. Many Gallic purists will point at the magna carta of La Pléiade, “Défense et illustration de la langue française,” as reason enough to fight against the encroachment of other, less worthy tongues into the only true language; in view of the recent flap over English as the language of America the Beautiful, really nothing more than a tempest in a teapot promulgated by the intellectually challenged and those devoid of any sense of humanism, I present here a dictionary of terms which must be avoided and their acceptable English alternatives.

The ~~Xenophobe’s Dictionary~~ List of Words for Folks who Don’t Like Outlanders.

Ketchup (from k’ē chap, Chinese for “tomato sauce”): Tomato paste with vinegar and onions and other stuff what makes it a vegetable for school lunches.

Kangaroo (from Australian aboriginal): Big Jumping Rat that makes fine eating.

Cola (from West African languages (Temne kola, Mandinka kolo): That brown drink what goes good with rum.

Coca-Cola (From from Quechua cuca and “cola” above): Something from that liberal-ass un-American company what right-thinking ‘Murcans won’t touch with a 10-foot pole. Even “Big K” has better stuff.

Jukebox (possibly from Wolof and Bambara dzug through Gullah + box): Record-player thingy what you put quarters in.

Candy (from Arabic قندي qandī, sugared): Dayum, you mean mah lemon-heads wuz invented by the A-rabs? Sumbitch, I’ll just have to switch to chawin’ terbacky. Say, Clem, gimme a chaw.

Tobacco (From Taino, a Caribbean language. Said to refer either to a roll of tobacco leaves or to the tabago, a kind of Y-shaped pipe for sniffing tobacco smoke also known as snuff, with the leaves themselves being referred to as cohiba): Stuff you roll up and stick in your mouth and then set on fire. ^[1]

…..

Well, you get the idea. In fact, purging our English language of all foreign influence would be an exercise in futility, for even Old English was liberally infused with Latin as the result of a 400-year Roman occupation, as well as being a combination of dialects prevalent in the area, including the languages of the Celts, the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes. There is no “pure English,” and if you tried to take away all the foreign influences our language has not only survived but reveled in over two thousand years, we’d be reduced to speaking in grunts and belches. Oh wait, a lot of people haven’t got much farther than that anyway.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

[1] Thanx and a tip of the hat ^[2] to Bob Newhart
[2] Thanx and a tip of the hat to Bill Holman

America: Beautiful in any language

Posted on February 4, 2014 by The Old Wolf

I recently posted about my experience watching two of my friends become American citizens. Now comes the Superbowl with its spate of commercials, one of which has generated some sentiment that absolutely should not exist in this country.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=443Vy3I0gJs

It’s a simple concept. People of various nationalities singing “America the Beautiful” in their own language. But for sheer ignorance, have a look at some of the Twitter comments recently posted about this commercial:

The Coca-Cola Co. Should apologize for the ridiculous #SuperBowl commercial #AmericaTheBeautiful should ONLY be in one language #English
Heres List Of ALL #Coke Products-BOYCOTT! Our Language Is #English Not Turkish! http://www.coca-colacompany.com/brands/all/ #SuperBowl #Broncos #SeaHawks #sports
Really glad I drink @Pepsi and not @CocaCola because that commercial was just AWFUL next time #ENGLISH please! #SB48 #SuperBowl
If you want to come to this country fine we welcome you BUT your going to sing America The Beautiful in #ENGLISH & drink #PEPSI #SUPERBOWL
I don’t think a commercial that sings in other than #English is a good idea #SuperBowl am not gonna buy ur product anymore
WTF? @CocaCola has America the Beautiful being sung in different languages in a #SuperBowl commercial? We speak ENGLISH here, IDIOTS.”

The xenophobia and ignorant racist vitriol being spewed out onto the Internet breaks my heart. Yet these people seem to have no problem driving down Via Verde Avenue in their Prius to go eat Pizza with their Swedish girlfriend… the intellectual and spiritual disconnect is very difficult for me to get my head around.

Some statistics would probably not be amiss here. The 2010 census reports:

Americans	308,745,538	100.0 %
White	223,553,265	72.4 %
African American	38,929,319	12.6 %
Asian American	14,674,252	4.8 %
Native Americans or Alaska Native	2,932,248	0.9 %
Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander	540,013	0.2 %
Some other race	19,107,368	6.2 %
Two or more races	9,009,073	2.9 %

Of that total, 16.4% are of hispanic or latino ancestry. That’s close to two out of every 10. Moreover, have a look at the 15 largest ancestries of these oh-s0-proud Americans:

It wouldn’t be surprising if the real names of some of these uneducated and small-spirited bloggers were Jorgensen, DeSalvo, O’Shaunessy, Kang, or Graumann. If they’re taking pride in being called Jones, they may well have forgotten their Welsh ancestry.

Kris Kristofferson has Swedish ancestry. The Governator is from Austria. Rocky Marciano was Italian. Bruce Willis was born in Idar-Oberstein, West Germany. Walter Cronkite had Dutch ancestry. Robert Zemeckis had Lithuanian ancestors. Gene Simmons was born in Israel. My own grandparents came from Tuscany and Calabria. America the beautiful, the open, the welcoming, the free – it has always been and will always be a melting pot of cultures, races, languages and ideologies. We must never forget the words of Emma Lazarus:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

“The New Colossus,” 1883

As our nation grows in population and we deal with issues of unemployment and the social well-being of our citizens, the issue of immigration must of necessity be dealt with in a rational and humane way, giving priority to those who enter our country through legal and approved channels – but we must never become a nation where ugly and brutal nationalism is allowed to become a vehicle for the demonization of any race, creed or culture. Our national language is English, and those immigrants who have been most successful are the ones who have assimilated rapidly, learned the language and the culture of their adopted home, and mainstreamed themselves and their children. But remembering and honoring their cultural heritage is also a big part of who they are, and how they interact with and contribute to the nation.

If you’re going to insist on English only, you must by rights exclude yourself from ever eating at Acquerello in San Francisco (in fact, you must refer to it as Saint Francis, and no one will know what the hqiz you are talking about) or Piccolo Angolo in New York; you are prohibited from ever driving a Porsche or a Mercedes-Benz; you may never refer to a shiatsu massage or a reiki treatment; you can’t drink vodka; taboo is taboo; you can never again use ketchup; and heaven help you if you want to eat fondue.

For the love of whatever you hold sacred, fight racism, exclusionism, nationalism and xenophobia with every fiber of your being. Every American citizen in this country is entitled to the same respect and status – remember, in the end, – with the exception of Native Americans who were here long before the Mayflower – we all got here on a boat one way or another.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Playing in the World Game

As One

Monthly Archives: February 2014

The Internet: A repository for all things arcane.

Tape Storage, 1977

Mexico: 1916 Auto Wreck

Selfie, 1920 Version.