Sunday: V-J Day, Goodbye Kisses, Working Women and Warning Signs

Posted: March 16, 2014 | Author: JJ Lopez aka Minkoff Minx | Filed under: Accommodation and Compromise, Affordable Care Act (ACA), Baby Boomers, China, Foreign Affairs, History, Medicaid, Medicare, morning reads, Real Life Horror, Religious Conscience, Reproductive Health, Reproductive Rights, Russia, Russian elections, science, Tea Party activists, the GOP, The Right Wing, Ukraine, Ukraine, Vagina, War on Women, Women's Healthcare, Women's Rights | Tags: Alfred Eisenstaedt, Glenn McDuffie, Koch Brothers, penis pumps paid for with medicare dollars, philanthropists, the brain initiative, WWII |33 Comments

Good Morning

I think it will be safe to say that today’s post is retro, super retro. And I really do not have all the space I need to post all the historic pictures I would like to post…so there will be links to other pages/galleries, and you must spend some time looking through the fascinating images.

Like the one to the right ———–>

Look at the expression on that woman’s face, if she could slam that thermos up-side the guy’s stupid head she would…but she appears too damn tired of hearing the kind of shit he is saying to even bother replying to the asshole.

At least the tag line on the bottom of the poster got it right:

America’s Women Have Met the Test!

Too bad that opinion did not last when the boys came back home.

I often wonder what would have happened if the Republican push to get women and their views on politics back in the kitchen was not as successful as it was during the 5o’s…can you imagine?

Anyway, this may seem a little familiar to my post from Wednesday, but there is a reason for this opening thought:

You must have heard that the sailor in one of the most iconic pictures of World War II died last week…V-J Day, 1945: A Nation Lets Loose | LIFE.com

Glenn McDuffie, a Navy veteran who long claimed to be the sailor photographed kissing a nurse in Times Square on V-J day — and whose claim was reportedly backed up by a police forensic artist — has died. He was 86 years old. (LIFE magazine — in which the now-iconic Alfred Eisenstaedt photo first appeared — never officially identified either the sailor or the nurse.)

Made almost 70 years ago, it remains one of the most famous photographs — perhaps the most famous photograph — of the 20th century: a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square on V-J Day in August 1945.

That simple, straightforward description of the scene, however, hardly begins to capture not only the spontaneity, energy and sheer exuberance shining from Alfred Eisentaedt’s photograph, but the significance of the picture as a kind of cultural — indeed a totemic — artifact.

“V-J Day in Times Square” is not merely the one image that captures what it felt like in America when it was finally announced, after a half-decade of global conflict, that Japan had surrendered and that the War in the Pacific — and thus the Second World War itself — was effectively ended. Instead, for countless people, Eisentaedt’s photograph captures at least part of what the people of a nation at war experience when war, any war, is over.

Glenn Edward McDuffie, who long claimed to be sailor in iconic Times Square  ‘kiss’ photo at end of WWII, dies  – NY Daily News

McDuffie, who passed away Sunday in Texas, had said he was motivated to randomly kiss the pretty nurse on the day Japan surrendered because it meant his brother would be getting released from a Japanese prison camp

The Texas man who made headlines for his repeated claims to being the sailor who randomly kissed a woman in Times Square, leading to one of the most iconic photographic images of World War II, has died.

Glenn Edward McDuffie passed away at age 86 on Sunday in Texas after suffering a heart attack at a casino earlier in the day, his daughter told the Daily News.

McDuffie claimed for years he was the strapping sailor who planted one on the lips of the swooning woman on August 14, 1945. He said it was a spontaneous act of unbridled euphoria sparked by the announcement of Japan’s surrender.

The Life magazine photographer who took the famed shot, Alfred Eisenstaedt, did not record the names of the subjects, and many people have claimed to be the mysterious sailor. In 2007 noted forensic artist Lois Gibson, who works for the Houston Police Department, said she positively identified McDuffie as the sailor. Her technique was to take numerous pictures of the older McDuffie and overlay them over the original. By doing so she said she compared the sailor’s muscles, ears and other features to McDuffie’s, and found them to be a match.

Take a look at the rest of that NY Daily News piece, it has later pictures of McDuffie along with some photos of him when he was young…and other older interview quotes as well.

But back to the Life Magazine link for a little more:

…two small but significant pieces of information related to Eisenstaedt’s rightfully famous “Kiss in Times Square” might come — especially when taken together — as a real surprise to fans of both photography and of LIFE magazine in general.

First, contrary to what countless people have long believed, the photo of the sailor kissing the nurse did not appear on the cover of LIFE. It did warrant a full page of its own inside the magazine (page 27 of the August 27, 1945, issue, to be exact) but was part of a larger, multi-page feature titled, simply, “Victory Celebrations.”

Closely tied to that first point is the fact that while the conclusion of the Second World War might be something LIFE magazine, of all publications, could be expected to feature on its cover for weeks on end, the magazine’s editors clearly had other ideas. In fact, not only did Eisensteadt’s Times Square photo not make the cover of the August 27th issue; no image related to the war, or the peace, graced the cover. Instead the magazine carried a striking photograph of a ballet dancer.

An underwater ballet dancer.

War is over! that cover seems to say.

After years of brutal, global slaughter, our lives — in all their frivolous, mysterious beauty — can finally begin again.

Amen to that.

Some of the pictures in that Life Magazine’s gallery are beautiful, they have published pictures that were not published in the original 1945 piece. Like this one below, of the V-J Day reaction in Hollywood:

I love that woman’s shoes! This article also is connected to another WWII era gallery at Life, Fighting Words: World War II Battlefield Signs | LIFE.com

“The universe is made of stories, not of atoms,” the American poet Muriel Rukeyser once wrote, and more and more, as time goes by, that sounds about right.

But what if paying strict heed to every written word that one saw every single day meant the difference between survival and annihilation? What if the misreading of a sign on an unfamiliar road, for example, meant not the inconvenience of a missed turn, but a sudden, violent death?

Take your Atabrine, an anti-malaria drug. Sign was put up at the 363rd station hospital in Papua, New Guinea during WWII

Here, LIFE.com takes a look at some of the countless signs that troops encountered during the course of World War II, from the islands of the Pacific to the deserts of North Africa to the ruined cities of Europe. Official warnings; adamant instructions; wry, handwritten inside jokes — all of them silent reminders of a conflict that, until the very end, dished out one paramount, universal command: Pay attention!

So again, check that link out along with the following:

WWII Signs on Pinterest

Women in WWII on Pinterest

Alfred Eisenstaedt Life Photographer on Pinterest

WWII on Pinterest

On the Job in WWII – Rosie and Friends. on Pinterest

This last board has some posters from WWI as well:

Vintage Ads, Billboards, Signs, Posters on Pinterest

Here are your newsy links for today, after the jump.

As Putin’s Popularity Soars, Voices of Opposition Are Being Drowned Out – NYTimes.com

There were two large rallies on Saturday in Moscow. One was a pro-government rally “in support of Crimea and against fascism,” led by a phalanx of husky men in identical crimson jackets, marching military-style in a sea of red. Some held signs reading “No Maidan in Moscow” and “Glory to Berkut,” references to Independence Square, the site of the Ukrainian protests in Kiev, and to the riot police who cracked down on the protesters.
The other was called a “March for Peace,” convened by the opposition to President Vladimir V. Putin. Holding paper doves aloft, they chanted “Putin Is Afraid of the Maidan” and a Ukrainian phrase that translates as “Putin, Get Out!” The police estimated that there were 3,000 people in this crowd, but it seemed many times larger, in the tens of thousands, filling a boulevard with bodies for many blocks.

The split reaction here reflects domestic tensions. Mr. Putin, who was shaken by large antigovernment demonstrations in Moscow two years ago, is using the confrontation to consolidate the public behind his rule, tapping into the deep well of emotion about the Soviet Union’s suffering at the hands of Nazi Germany. The authorities have tried to mobilize support on federal television channels, and have muted independent voices on the Internet.

You want to see just what these “marches” looked like? Talk about pictures pretty much saying it all?

Protesters in Moscow carried Ukrainian and Russian flags at a rally on Saturday against recent Russia’s move on Crimea. Credit Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times

A rival procession was held in Moscow on Saturday to express support for Russia’s move on Crimea. Credit Tatyana Makeyeva/Reuters

Wow, can you tell which one is pro-Putin?

And, where are all the women in that “red” march?

Back to the article:

It is common for Russians — even liberal ones — to say that Crimea is Russian land to begin with, mistakenly transferred to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1954. But some supporters who marched on Saturday saw Mr. Putin’s agenda as a far more sweeping one, which would see Russia reclaim lands it lost in the 20th century.

“It’s not just that Crimea should join Russia — we should restore the whole Soviet Union, and I think this what Putin wants,” said Sergei Prokopenko, 40, who said he worked occasionally at a warehouse.

[…]

Across town, at the antiwar march, the turnout was higher than many expected, and some women wore flower garlands in their hair, like Ukrainian folk dancers. Opponents of intervention in Ukraine have found themselves isolated as the crisis has mounted, and several marchers acknowledged that differences over Crimea had split their families or social circles. But the large crowd — numbers that the Kremlin could not ignore — made the mood buoyant.

“With Crimea, it is obvious that, in my view, it was a historic mistake to make it part of Ukraine, but the way Russia is trying to get it back is a mistake two times bigger,” said Andrei A. Yegorshev, a journalist at a state radio station.

Elisabeth Mouravieff, 73, said she had joined the march in spite of her conviction that “Crimea is Russia.” She said Mr. Putin was being driven by his “imperial mood” and the sense that his own government could face a wave of protest like the one that toppled Ukraine’s president.

“I came because I couldn’t not come,” she said. “The atmosphere is darkening. It is troubling. It is very frightening that the authorities are provoking violence between Russians and Ukrainians. I also came because of my anger at the lies of the mass media.”

It has been a grim few weeks for Russian liberals, whose burst of influence during the antigovernment protests of 2011 and 2012 has melted away.

The last lines in this story end with a reference to drinking:

Maria Baronova, an opposition activist who works at Dozhd, said that at some point it had all become too much for her.

“To be honest, I drank yesterday as if it was the last time,” she wrote on Twitter. “For the first time in my life, I drank not in the framework of fun, but simply so that I would not think.”

Oh boy…drunk Russians…not “fun” drunk Russians but fucking depressed and hopeless drunk Russians. Not good.

Hey, we can go from that visual to the Malaysian fear factor:

Malaysia 370 Update: Landing Strips, Cell Phones, and More – James Fallows – The Atlantic

Search for Missing Plane Faces Steep New Challenges – NYTimes.com

Missing Malaysia plane inquiry focuses on the 239 on board – latimes.com

Like an Agatha Christie whodunit, the investigation of the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is now focusing on a finite circle of suspects: the 227 passengers and 12 crew members of the missing plane.

While loath to call it a hijacking, Malaysian officials say they believe someone on the plane with expertise in the navigational and communications systems of the Boeing 777 diverted it from its Kuala Lumpur-to-Beijing flight path.

“In view of this latest development, Malaysian authorities have refocused their investigation into the crew and passengers on board,” Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said at a news conference Saturday. But, he said, “despite media reports that the plane was hijacked, I wish to be very clear we are still investigating all possibilities for what led … Flight 370 to deviate from its flight path.”

U.S. investigators appeared to be focusing Saturday on a failed-hijacking theory, renewing their background checks on the passengers and crew.

Thus far they have turned up no evidence of any “traditional” Islamic terrorist link to the plane’s disappearance. But they remain intrigued about who might have diverted the jumbo jet westward from its planned course.

“This is feeling like kind of a failed hijacking,” a federal law enforcement official said, speaking anonymously because the investigation was ongoing.

Failed? I don’t know, seems like it kind of succeeded to me?

He said U.S. authorities theorized that once the plane was diverted toward the Indian Ocean, it was flown erratically at high altitudes in an attempt to depressurize the cabin and render the passengers unconscious. “That could have neutralized any threat from them to take the plane back,” he said.

“Indicators suggest it was a deliberate incident, not equipment failure,” said Tom Captain, principal and vice chairman of the aerospace and defense practice at financial advisory firm Deloitte. “It’s hard to see how a passenger could get in the cockpit without distress signals sent from the crew.”

Among those who are coming under investigation are pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, one of the airline’s most seasoned pilots, described by Malaysian newspapers as an “aviation geek” who owned a flight simulator at home and flew remote-control airplanes and helicopters as a hobby.

Copilot Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27, with the airline since 2007, had been the subject of speculation because of a 2011 incident in which he invited two South African women into the cockpit during a flight, where the women said he flirted with them, smoked cigarettes and posed for photographs.

This article does touch on some of the other passengers, something I have not seen before, but then I am not watching the Flight 370 Network aka CNN 24/7…

Now the rest of those on the flight have been transformed from probable victims to potential suspects. The largest number of passengers, 159, were Chinese nationals. Most of the rest were Malaysians, with a few Ukrainians, Indians, Indonesians, Australians and three Americans. U.S. expatriate Philip Wood, 51, worked for IBM; the two other Americans have been described as toddlers.

Among the Chinese were a group of artists and calligraphers returning from an exhibition celebrating the “Chinese Dream.” One was a 35-year-old ethnic Uighur, Maimaitijiang Abula from Kashgar, in western China’s Xinjiang region. He’s been singled out by the Malaysian press because of fear of violence from the Uighur separatist movement in China.

“It is important to profile all the passengers and crew. All the countries whose nationals were on that flight have to participate in the investigation so that they can narrow it down to who is responsible,” said Rohan Gunaratna, a Singapore-based terrorism expert. “It is very likely that more than one person was responsible and that there were others on the ground responsible as well.”

You can read more at the link. As far as the issue of competence and the Malaysian Government, read more on the problems with the investigation here:  Experts: Search for jet hampered by Malaysian government | Boston Herald

The investigation into the mysterious disappearance of a Malaysian Airlines passenger jet has been hindered by the Malaysian government’s lack of technology and its reluctance to share critical information about the flight now the subject of an unprecedented search that stretches from the southern tip of the Indian Ocean to Kazakhstan, aviation experts said.

Government officials behind the search announced yesterday Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 — which took off March 8 bound for Beijing with 227 passengers — was deliberately diverted and continued flying for more than six hours after losing contact with the ground.

“The evidence is pretty sketchy, the electronic evidence. And the government doesn’t seem to be too technically savvy in terms of interpreting it,” said Vernon Grose, a veteran NTSB plane crash investigator.

Malaysia is not suited to handle an investigation of this scope, and the investigation has been compromised, he said.

“The fact is they’re not very well-equipped to head the investigation,” Grose said.

John Hansman, an aeronautics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said, “We probably could have been searching more efficiently if the Malaysian government had been more open with the information it had.”

No kidding…but the latest from CNN:

Flight 370: Officials lean toward ‘those in the cockpit’ theory

Lives, not numbers: Snapshots of Malaysia Airlines passengers

Now, moving on with another New York Times article….Billionaires With Big Ideas Are Privatizing American Science

Last April, President Obama assembled some of the nation’s most august scientific dignitaries in the East Room of the White House. Joking that his grades in physics made him a dubious candidate for “scientist in chief,” he spoke of using technological innovation “to grow our economy” and unveiled “the next great American project”: a $100 million initiative to probe the mysteries of the human brain.

Along the way, he invoked the government’s leading role in a history of scientific glories, from putting a man on the moon to creating the Internet. The Brain initiative, as he described it, would be a continuation of that grand tradition, an ambitious rebuttal to deep cuts in federal financing for scientific research.

[…]

Absent from his narrative, though, was the back story, one that underscores a profound change taking place in the way science is paid for and practiced in America. In fact, the government initiative grew out of richly financed private research: A decade before, Paul G. Allen, a co-founder of Microsoft, had set up a brain science institute in Seattle, to which he donated $500 million, and Fred Kavli, a technology and real estate billionaire, had then established brain institutes at Yale, Columbia and the University of California. Scientists from those philanthropies, in turn, had helped devise the Obama administration’s plan.

American science, long a source of national power and pride, is increasingly becoming a private enterprise.

In Washington, budget cuts have left the nation’s research complex reeling. Labs are closing. Scientists are being laid off. Projects are being put on the shelf, especially in the risky, freewheeling realm of basic research. Yet from Silicon Valley to Wall Street, science philanthropy is hot, as many of the richest Americans seek to reinvent themselves as patrons of social progress through science research.

The result is a new calculus of influence and priorities that the scientific community views with a mix of gratitude and trepidation.

“For better or worse,” said Steven A. Edwards, a policy analyst at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, “the practice of science in the 21st century is becoming shaped less by national priorities or by peer-review groups and more by the particular preferences of individuals with huge amounts of money.”

Shit, just like politics…art…education and now…science and technology…only the ones with the big money will set “the way of the future.”

The new philanthropists represent the breadth of American business, people like Michael R. Bloomberg, the former New York mayor (and founder of the media company that bears his name), James Simons (hedge funds) and David H. Koch (oil and chemicals), among hundreds of wealthy donors. Especially prominent, though, are some of the boldest-face names of the tech world, among them Bill Gates (Microsoft), Eric E. Schmidt (Google) and Lawrence J. Ellison (Oracle).

This is philanthropy in the age of the new economy — financed with its outsize riches, practiced according to its individualistic, entrepreneurial creed. The donors are impatient with the deliberate, and often politicized, pace of public science, they say, and willing to take risks that government cannot or simply will not consider.

Yet that personal setting of priorities is precisely what troubles some in the science establishment. Many of the patrons, they say, are ignoring basic research — the kind that investigates the riddles of nature and has produced centuries of breakthroughs, even whole industries — for a jumble of popular, feel-good fields like environmental studies and space exploration.

Well, fuckadoodledoo!

You can read the rest…but here is another science link: Rough diamond hints at vast quantities of water inside Earth

A small, battered diamond found in the gravel strewn along a shallow riverbed in Brazil has provided evidence of a vast “wet zone” deep inside the Earth that could hold as much water as all the world’s oceans put together.

The water is not sloshing around inside the planet, but is held fast within minerals in what is known as the Earth’s transition zone, which stretches from 410 to 660km (250-400 miles) beneath the surface.

“It’s not a Jules Verne-style ocean you can sail a boat on,” said Graham Pearson, a geologist who studied the stone at the University of Alberta. The water-rich zone could transform scientists’ understanding of how some of the Earth’s geological features arose.

Damn, and I was picturing Pat Boone in little tight shorts and Reverend Pendrake aka Professor Stokes i.e. Thayer David, chasing after Gertrude the duck…killing her and eating her. Yum.

Alright, down to the end of the post…

The 1 Weirdest Thing You Never Knew About Your Home State

There was so many I could choose from…I decided to go with the one that was the cleverest?

Alaska

A clever jokester once burned tires inside a dormant volcano to make it seem active on April 1st.

On April 1, 1974, Oliver Bickar climbed into Mt. Edgecumbe, a volcano that had been dormant for around 9,000 years, and made it look like it was coming back to life. After four years of planning, Bickar doused 100 tires in cooking oil and lit them on fire inside Mt. Edgecumbe. He also spray painted “April Fool” in 50 foot letters around the rim.

The others are funny too, but no surprises. (Texas)

Oh, and did you all catch this: ‘Daily Show’ Exposes the Huge Double Standard Birth Control Opponents Won’t Admit – PolicyMic

You’ve heard a lot about the birth control mandate, but have you heard anything about the penis pump mandate? Thanks to the Daily Show‘s Samantha Bee and her interview with NARAL Pro-Choice America President Ilyse Hogue, you will now.

If we didn’t spend so much time debating whether women who use birth control are skank muffins or slut bags, maybe we would notice that penis pumps have been receiving millions of dollars of federal funding over the years. Although birth control has health benefits, has been deemed an intrinsic human right by the United Nations and is one of the biggest factors in helping women approach economic parity, many conservatives remain luke-warm about it, because, Jesus.

No one wants to pay to you to have sex! That’s ridiculous! That is unless, you’re a dude.

Although the birth control mandate has been hotly debated and contested for its burden on taxpayers, Medicare has spent $172 million on penis pumps in the last five years alone. Viagra has also received $819 million and Cyalis more than $782 million. But you’ll never hear those numbers being debated anywhere.

Politicians have spent countless hours debating whether birth control should be federally funded, and zero minutes discussing whether penis pumps should be covered by Medicare.

Yeah…like my daughter’s spacer for her asthma inhaler…that was not covered by insurance. But…penis pumps…by all means.

And with that, a kiss goodbye!

 

Y’all have a delicious day, and share whatever you want down in the comments below!

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