Atomic Razor

Please Do Not Attempt to Download This Book Without a Highspeed Internet Connection

Hudson Institute > Herman Kahn

A scan of Herman Kahn's The Year 2000: A Framework for Speculation on the Next Thirty-Three Years.

I think they had a copy of this in the library at Salford, but for some reason it was a reference-only book, so I couldn't puruse it at home. As the Weasel points out, this kind of PDF is best approached via an ebook reader. One would prefer a searchable copy. I would like to produce an annotated edition for the Atomic Razor Press. Just think of the material for atompunk AH stories to be garnered here. Naturally, I would also like to write The Year 2050: A Framework for Speculation on the Next Forty Years I think it would take me 2009 to write it - I am open to offers. Of course, it could take until 2017...

Blogged with the Flock Browser

The Gadfly

Ethel Lilian Voynich - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So, Ethel was

• the lover of, or at very least well-known to, Sidney Reilly, who may, or may not, have a major inspiration for her novel, The Gadfly, one of the best-selling novels in the Soviet Union (2.5 million copies sold)
• the wife of Wilfrid Michael Voynich, "Polish revolutionary, British and American antiquarian and bibliophile, and the eponym of the Voynich manuscript"
• the daughter of George Boole, inventor of Boolean algebra and author of The Laws of Thought
• grand-niece of Sir George Everest
• born in Cork (where my father was born, although nearly sixty years after Ethel; actually he was born in Cobh, but that's close enough to Cork and I like to think some of his relatives might have bumped into Ethel in her early days)
  

Ethel lived to be 96 and has an asteroid named after her by Tamara Smirnova, the legendary Russian asteroid hunter.

Boole, Reilly, Voynich, best-selling novel in the the Soviet Union, asteroid. This is extraordinary. The novel almost writes itself. This is all going in The Mundanomicon.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Absolutely Quackers

Quacker (sound) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Given the lack of corroborative reports from NATO sources (of course, these might still be classified) and the fact that "[i]n the 1980s the phenomenon slowly faded", I think we can probably ascribe the source of these sounds to artefacts of 1970s-era Soviet sonars. As these sonars were replaced by different (more advanced) ones over the course of in the 1980s, so the quackers were no observed less often.

The thing is that Soviet Academy of Sciences must have thought of this explanation. Which means either they ruled it or they were too embarrassed to admit that the quackers were artefacts. Without seeing the official SAS report though how are we to know that the quackers aren't just an old submariner's tale?

As for the Bloop and the Slow Down, my guess is that these would be some kind of geological phenomenon such as a particular type of underwater landslide.

Blogged with the Flock Browser