Prisoners were forced to carry granite blocks some weighing up to 110 lb. up 186 steps, repeatedly throughout the day, if they fell from exhaustion they were often killed.

Gordon Foster moved through the 20th century like a lost character from Cryptonomicon.

He worked as a code-breaker in Bletchley Park, met Alan Turing, studied cybernetics, helped develop operations research, invented ISBN, became a professor in Statistics at TCD, connected remote areas to the internet and communicated with doctors attending the Ebola epidemic in Zaire.

RIP.

Imogen, there's no heaven.

Greece’s newest government minister, carrying an axe

The most important article I read this week:

Austerity & Fascism In Greece: The Real 1% Doctrine - Exiled Online
Mark Ames - Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Here is a stream-of-angry-consciousness passage I wrote about it.

Just in case it wasn't clear:

One of the 'technocrats' installed in the new Greek government is a card-carrying, Jew-hating, leftist-bashing fascist in the classic style. The occasion of the near-collapse of the Greek state is the opportunity they've been dreaming of since the fall of the Colonels.

Another Papandreou driven from power, by no means guilt-less, but at least he tried. This one, unlike his father, remembered to fire the army leadership before stepping down. Greece remains second only to Turkey in Europe for deep-state and army skullduggery, with a side of ethnic-identity fascism.

I know this isn't as interesting to most people as the nice pictures of babies and how they look 20 years later, but it's important to realise that the 'austerity' is a Trojan horse for the kind of hard-right politics that has been in the doldrums for 20 years.
The Strong State is back, and it's going to fuck you again.

The last two winters in Ireland have been colder than usual, with deep snow and frozen roads. Public transport seized up and water supplies dried up. In February 2009, I was working in An Gúm, on the New English-Irish Dictionary project, first real job after college.

I was walking to work because the buses weren't running out as far as my house, and the bike was a non-starter on icy roads. As I walked past my beloved Marlay Grange, I saw the gate was partially open, as it often was (more on that later).

I resolved to get up extra early the next day, and bring my camera to work if the snow still lay. And it did, so I slipped between the gates and explored the snowy landscape, for all the world like the world of Narnia.

I took a number of photos which I wanted to share, but I delayed doing so for a number of reasons. Now there's no point in sitting on them any longer. These may be the last photos of the house intact, a very sad thought.

You can also read more about the house and grounds or take a look at the gate-lodge and its history.

Comment as you wish, click below to see the photos.

Since it's easier to start again with a trifle than a weighty tome... My friend Dave found the Wikipedia article of the week:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_Park

It is written in the slightly tongue-in-cheek style of a Wiki article that hasn't been found by the deletionist hordes yet, interspersing slight anecdotes with factual information. Knowledge doesn't have to be boring.

This New Jersey water park, a more extreme version of Ireland's Clara Lara, opened in the late 70s and closed in the late 90s. But it lives on, on the internet, where the history of each incredibly dangerous ride becomes more and more vivid.

Kids who grew up in New Jersey still talk about Action Park today, and reminisce about the thrill of danger, especially of the almost legendary looping waterslide.

Some choice quotes from the Wikipedia article:

For the remainder of the park's existence, it remained visible near the entrance of Waterworld, tempting visitors with the possibility of the thrilling ride it might have offered yet tempering it with the high potential for injury that was just as obvious from looking at it.

A rider also reportedly got stuck at the top of the loop due to insufficient water pressure, and a hatch had to be built at the bottom of the slope to allow for future extractions

As with the Super Speedboats mentioned below, the bumper boats pond was infested with snakes, and the boats themselves were notoriously difficult to maneuver, so much so that the employees who worked there in 1990 were reduced to shouting "Skee-Da-Va", "Squeeze The Wheeze", and other nonsense.

The director of the emergency room at a nearby hospital said they treated from five to ten victims of park accidents on some of the busiest days, and the park eventually bought the township of Vernon extra ambulances to keep up with the volume.

Read it all, and enjoy the strange sensation that you are watching a 1980s Australian comedy.

Further reading:

• Remembering Action Park
  With great photos and PDFs of the plans for the park
• Weird N.J.'s article
• Flickr album of a 1994 visit
  Delicously 90s nostalgia

Jean Medécin,

who had a son who was also mayor for a long time,

Jacques Medécin

who, unlike his father, was fond of

Gaullism,

the French political ideology which espouses national independence, including the

Force de frappe,

the tactical and strategic framework for

France's weapons of mass destruction,

which were mostly tested in her colonies and had some costly accidents including the

Beryl incident,

when some soldiers and officials were exposed to radiation, including another Gaullist,

Gaston Paleweski,

long-time lover of English novelist Nancy Mitford, one of the

Mitford sisters,

another of whom married

Oswald Mosley

a notable British proponent of

fascism.

The personal effects of Ted Kaczynski, aka the Unabomber, will be sold via an online auction by the U.S. Marshals beginning May 18, 2011. U.S. District Judge Garland Burrell of the Eastern District of California ordered the sale in August 2010. Proceeds from the auction will be used to compensate Kaczynski’s victims.

The Marshals have seen fit to upload the photos of his effects to a Flickr album, where you can peruse them to make your choice in advance.

What is most striking about the items is not how evil and terroristic they look, but how well they would fit into a Williamsburg loft apartment...

All he's missing is the fixie.

Unabomber	Hipster
The iconic look	Zac Efron failing to pull it off
Military surplus satchel	Human surplus, satchel
A classic instrument for castigating civilization	Smoking because you can't write
Terrorist aviators	Shatterproof shades for the clumsy scene kid
"The leftist is not typically the kind of person..."	"Dear diary, I stole my sister's new jeans..."
Taking family photo to phone-less forest shack	Taking kooky photos with iPhone & Hipstamatic
Contents: Nails, varnish, bomb	Contents: Nail-varnish, bath-bomb
Using bow and arrow to live off the land	Dressing up as an Indian to get laid

One can almost imagine the post-post-modern textbooks of tomorrow's sociology courses:

In their iconoclastic but limp-wristed efforts to escape mainstream culture, the hipsters of the early 2000s recapitulated the imagery and self-image of the "wild man" of the post-war period, Theodore Kaczynski, the "Unabomber".

As Williamsburg became overpopulated and the post-industrial ("screamo") industry took hold, many young rich Americans abandoned their cars and took to the use of bikes without gears, even sans free-wheel.

These "fixie" bikes sped them on a one-way trip to an ironic terrorist campaign, operating out of thousands of identikit forest shacks. Sitting in small groups, crafting elaborately anachronistic French-nail-bombs, they subsisted entirely on Pabst Blue Ribbon and the nutrients emanating from each other's egos.

When the last worldly effects of the first hipster king came on the market, the houses of couture rushed to snap them up. American Apparel out-bid Urban Outfitters to claim the exclusive rights to produce UNABOM aviator sunglasses.

Eventually, the bottom fell out of the market for Kaczynski reproductions and several chain-stores were left with staggeringly large stockpiles of imitation hiking boots and plastic detonators.

I guess knowledge in digital format is less worthy than that on dead trees, or children's shoes.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.

Robert A. Heinlein, 1973