I usually mention about this time every year that August 13 is kind of a special day around here. It’s the day that Claire and myself went on our first official date and it’s also my dad’s birthday. I suppose that I should mention that it’s also International Left-Handers Day, but somehow that pales in significance compared to the other reasons to celebrate today.
Mine and my dad’s birthdays alway fall on the same day of the week — this year, that’s a Sunday. It’s the 33rd Sunday of this year — and — there are only 140 days left in 2023. In 1971, the year of our first date, August 13th was a Friday — turns out that was a good omen. My dad was born in 1908, so today would be his 115th birthday. And 52 years ago today, we went to see Blood, Sweat and Tears. So August 13 remains special around here. — 30 —
We get a monthly magazine from an investment firm and looking through the last issue, there was an article titled “The Mysteries of History.” It had brief paragraphs about a lot of “mysteries” both past and present. It mentioned things like Big Foot, The Lost Colony, the Lizzy Borden Home, Area 51/UFOs, the Escape from Alcatraz, and things like that.
I thought this might be a good time to talk about a present day mystery — one that’s a lot closer to my life than you might know…. Krypton is a sculpture located in the courtyard at the CIA’s headquarters. The sculpture is a 12-foot tall, S-shaped copper scroll supported by a petrified tree.The scroll is made up of four panels, stacked and welded together. The bend of the S and the position of onlookers determines how lines are read — left to right, backward and forward. The four panels contain four encrypted messages — altogether there are 1,735 letters on the scroll. The sculpture is known as Kryptos — the Greek word for “hidden.” The letters look like gibberish because it’s a cipher. The sculpture was created by Washington native, Jim Sanborn. And it was his idea to place it in the courtyard at CIA — a very appropriate place considering CIA has some of the best cryptographers in the world.
The sculpture contains four encrypted messages. It was dedicated in 1990 by CIA Director William Webster and thirty three years later, only three of the messages have been decoded, or “solved.” NSA was able to decode the first three messages pretty quickly by using computers. Much more impressive is the fact that CIA employee David Stein decoded the messages by hand in 1999. He estimates that it took about 400 hours of painstaking, convoluted thinking to break the codes.
Something that isn’t well known about Kryptos is that the scroll isn’t all there is to it. Scattered around the courtyard there are shrubs, some polished granite formations, a koi pond, etc. — all part of Kryptos. Those granite structures can also be found elsewhere on the grounds — one has a Morse code motif, and another has a compass rose pointing at — the unknown?
Now here’s why I mentioned that I feel a bit of a connection to Kryptos — while Sanborn created the Kryptos sculpture, the task of writing the cipher fell to a CIA employee that I know very well, and served with on several assignments at various places in the world. We are both the same age and retired roughly about the same time. Sanborn contacted my friend and they met at secret locations in the Washington area and they wrote down almost nothing and didn’t use electronic devices. To Sunburn’s credit he was able to remember their conversations well enough to get back to his studio and hammer out the messages — that probably explains the few minor mistakes in the code on the panels.
The first three panels of the sculpture were designed not to last a long time, but with the fourth panel, the two wanted to “make it a challenge.” If you’re interested, you can find the encoded text of Kryptos on the Internet — including Section IV that ,as of today, remains a mystery.
The message of Kryptos, and a partial guide to its solution, is contained in the panels of the sculpture. The passages follow a theme of concealment and discovery — each more difficult to decipher than the last.
The first reads: BETWEEN SUBTLE SHADING AND THE ABSENCE OF LIGHT LIES THE NUANCE OF IQLUSION.” (The misspelling was intentional, according to Mr. Sanborn, to make it more difficult to decode — or, as he put it, “to mix it up.”)
The second includes the location of the CIA headquarters by latitude and longitude and then asks: “DOES LANGLEY KNOW ABOUT THIS? THEY SHOULD: IT’S BURIED OUT THERE SOMEWHERE. X WHO KNOWS THE EXACT LOCATION? ONLY WW.” (The WW is a reference to William Webster, the head of the CIA when the sculpture was unveiled. It’s said that Mr. Sanborn provided him with a key for deciphering the message.)
The third panel paraphrases, again with a bit of misspelling, the account by the Egyptologist Howard Carter of opening King Tut’s tomb: “SLOWLY, DEPARATLY, SLOWLY, THE REMINS OF PASSAGE DEBRIS THAT ENCUMBERED THE LOWER PART OF THE DOORWAY WAS REMOVED. WITH TREMBLING HANDS I MADE A TINY BREACH IN THE UPPER LEFT-HAND CORNER. AND THEN, WIDENING THE HOLE A LITTLE, I INSERTED THE CANDLE AND PEERED IN. THE HOT AIR ESCAPING FROM THE CHAMBER CAUSED THE FLAME TO FLICKER, BUT PRESENTLY DETAILS OF THE ROOM WITHIN EMERGED FROM THE MIST. XCAN YOU SEE ANYTHING? Q” (The enciphered texts didn’t include any punctuation — any punctuation was added after the text was deciphered.)
The fourth section is shorter than the others, it’s just 97 characters. That fact could, in itself, present a decryption challenge — common solution methods rely on the frequency of the most common letters. The last passage also uses what is known as a masking technique, a further level of obfuscation. As I said, the fourth Section has not been solved. Over the years, Mr. Sanborn has offered “clues” to help unravel the mystery ‚ they are in the form of “cribs” that are words or phrases that appear in the decrypted text. In 2010, his clue was BERLiN. In 2014 he reveled the word CLOCK. His last clue was the word NORTHEAST.
Jim Sanborn is now 74 or 75 year old. What if Section IV isn’t solved before he dies? He has apparently decided that if the code is not broken when he dies, the secret will be put up for auction. He said the buyer could reveal the secret or perpetuate the mystery. The money raised would go to funding climate science. When asked why that particular cause, he said it “seemed like a no brainer to me.”
So maybe the fourth passage will turn out to be unsolvable, but probably sooner or later someone will figure out the plain text of that final passage. But — that won’t be the end of the mysteries of Kryptos. The full text contains a riddle. There will be yet another mystery that the four passages together have a meaning that’s greater than their individual pieces and there’s something more to figure out. The sculpture is more than the scroll — there are scraps of Morse code scattered through the elements around the scroll, as well as a pillar of petrified wood, a swirling pool, slabs of granite — and more. The full mystery of Kryptos could involve the broader assemblage of pieces and their relationships to each other. So there’s sill lots and lots to learn about the mysteries of Kryptos — the sculpture that just keeps on giving…. — 30 —
Well, if you’re not a big fan of hot weather, there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that today marks the official end of the “dog days of summer.” The bad news? Unofficially, it’s probably going still be hot for another month or so.
The “dog days of summer” occur every year from July 3 to August 11. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, or just naturally smart, you know that the dog days has more to do with the stars than dogs.
If you want more details, check the archives, but to recap, Sirius, which is known as the “Dog Star” of the “Canis Major, the Greater Dog” constellation, during the period between July 3 and August 11 is the brightest star visible and occupies the same region of the sky as the Sun. This led the ancient Romans to believe Sirius was adding to the warmth of the sun, and the “dog days of summer” were born.
But — the Romans were wrong. Sirius doesn’t actually add any heat, so even though the dog days end, the heat doesn’t. I guess the next “official” weather event will be the official start of fall — we’ll see what that brings…. — 30 —
Today is one of those Feast Days in the Catholic Church that I really don’t know much about. Maybe I haven’t been paying attention, bur I don’t remember hearing any priest over the years, say much about him. So — I looked him up. He’s listed as St. Lawrence, Deacon and Martyr. He was born on December 31, 225 and died on August 10, 258. His Feast Day is today, August 10. The fact that today’s celebration ranks as a feast certainly says something about him, and that the Church holds him in fairly high esteem.
But we really know very little about his life. He’s one of those whose martyrdom obviously made a deep and lasting impression on the early Church. He was one of seven deacons who were in charge of giving help to the poor and needy. The big trouble started when the troublemakers, who did not like Christians, decided to kill Pope Saint Sixtus II. The story goes that as they took the Pope away for execution, Lawrence followed him — weeping, and said, “Father where are you going without your deacon?” The Pope answered, “I am not leaving you, my son, in three days you will follow me”. Lawrence was so happy, he gave all the money he had with him to the poor. He even sold expensive church vessels so he would have more money to give away.
The perfect of Rome (responsible for maintaining law and order within Rome — he was later in charge of Rome’s entire city government) was a greedy man and thought the Church had a great fortune hidden away. He ordered Lawrence to bring the Church’s treasure to him. The (to be) saint said he would — in three days. Then he went through the city and gathered together all the poor and sick people supported by the Church. He showed them to the perfect and said, “These people are the Church’s treasure.” Well — as you might imagine, the perfect was a little bit ticked, actually he was furious. He asked that Lawrence be killed slowly so he would suffer more. The saint was tied on top of an iron grill over a slow fire that roasted him. God gave him strength enough to remain cheerful and maintain his sense of humor — the legend says that before he died, he said, “It is well done. Turn me over!!” St Lawrence is the Patron Saint of, among others, Rome, miners, tanners, students, poor, firefighters — and — cooks. I’d say that’s appropriate, given St. Lawrence’s ending….. — 30 —
Today is August 9, and while not generally recognized as quite as significant day as August 6, it played a major role in history. I’m sure you’re aware that on this date in 1945, the US dropped the second atomic bomb, “Fat Man,” on Nagasaki, Japan. Even though it doesn’t get the recognition that the first bomb, dropped on August 6, gets — it’s really the one that “sealed the deal,” prompting the surrender of Japan to end World War II.
Of course, August 9 is noted for other things, too…. Construction of the Tower of Pisa began in 1173 — it took two centuries to complete. In 1483, this date marked the opening of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. And in 1944, Smokey Bear debuted as spokesman for fire prevention for the US Forest Service. (Smokey was named after a NYC fireman — Smokey Joe Martin.) For you stair haters, on this day in 1859, inventor Otis Tufts patented the first elevator in the US. His patent paperwork calls the invention the “vertical railway elevator.” And I should mention that in 1974, Vice President Gerald Ford was sworn in as the 38th President of the United States after Richard Nixon handed in his resignation.
So — with all these momentous events occurring on this day, it should have a special name, don’t you think? Well, in fact, it does. It’s National Rice Pudding Day. Yep, you heard that right — rice pudding gets its own day!
Historians are divided over whether rice pudding originated in China or India. Obviously rice is a core staple in both those countries, so it’s possible/probable that rice pudding could have been invented in either country. When the dish first came on the scene, it was called rice “porridge, or “pottage” — not pudding. The original recipe hasn’t changed much over the years — water, milk, or cream is mixed with rice and then heated, either by boiling or baking…. that results in rice pudding.
Until the 1800s, rice pudding was considered to have medicinal properties. Today almost every country has rice pudding, or some version of it. A.A. Milne, the author of of Winnie the Pooh, wrote a poem called Rice Pudding, in 1924. It’s supposedly one of the author’s most-loved works. In Sweden, rice pudding is a popular dish at Christmas. An almond is traditionally hidden inside the pudding, and the person who eats it will probably get married the next year.
So today you can commemorate, or celebrate the historical events that happened on this date by eating rice pudding — or — celebrate National Rice Pudding Day…. by eating rice pudding. — 30 —
The weather has always generated a lot of “sayings,” beliefs, and folklore. Some I remember when growing up, or have heard over the years include, “it’s dog days and snakes are blind, ye better be careful cause they’ll strike at anything that moves.” I remember hearing about dew poisoning when I was little…. if you got a cut on your finger or hand and got the morning dew in it the cut would never heal. A lot of people believed that it was hard for any cut or open wound to heal during the dog days.
There are a lot of poems or “rhymes” about the weather — some I remember hearing when I was a kid, but they don’t seem so popular today —I guess if people are wondering about the weather, they just tune in to the TV weatherman/girl — or — check their phones. But if you want to forego those modern techniques, here’s some advice.
If you’re hoping for a nice, dry day, check for dew in the morning….. When the dew is on the grass Rain will never come to pass When grass is dry at morning light Look for rain before the night.
Claire always says you can tell if its going to rain if the cows are laying down, but you can apparently also predict the weather by looking at the cows (and horses) tails… Tails point west Weather’s at its best Tails pointing east Weather is least
And did you know that summer fog means fair weather is on its way…. Summer fog for fair A winter fog for rain A fact most everywhere In valley or on plain
And of course roosters do more than just wake you up, they know something about weather too… If the rooster crows at going to bed You may rise with a watery head
And since we’re into August, it may be time to get prepared…. “For every fog in August there will be a snow come winter.” Maybe it’s just better to sleep late on foggy August mornings, just in case. So weather, like a lot of things has its share of folklore….who knows, it may be as good a way to predict weather as satellites. — 30 —
I heard the term “Indian giver” the other day. I hadn’t heard it for a very long time. When I was a kid, we used it all the time and it was right up there near the top of one of the most offensive things you could call someone.
Well, of course, I got to thinking about that — where did the term come from? Was there actually an instance, when the first colonists came to America, when a white settler was presented with a gift from an Indian, only to have it taken away? I think the answer to that is no….not really. What white settlers thought was a lack of generosity, and rudeness, was probably a cultural misunderstanding.
Native Americans didn’t have a system of monetary currency, so they conducted trade via barter. To an Indian, the giving of gifts was an extension of this system of trade and a gift was expected to be reciprocated with something of equal value. When the new arrivals in this country encountered this practice, they misunderstood it and considered it uncouth and impolite. They thought that trade was conducted with money, and gifts were freely given with nothing expected in return. So right off the bat, this native practice got a bad reputation among the white colonists of North America.
The term “Indian giver” made its first appearance in Bartlett’s Dictionary of Americanisms in 1848. The term mostly faded from widespread use in the 1080s and 90s and a lot of younger people today may never have heard it. I checked the Merriam-Webster Dictionary and it defines an “Indian giver” as “a person who gives something to another and then takes it back or expects an equivalent in return.” The dictionary does note that the term is “sometimes offensive.” I find it interesting that the dictionary only finds the term sometimes offensive.
The (true) Indian giver(s) understood a cardinal property of the gift — whatever we have been given is suppose to be given away again, not kept. Or — if it is kept, something of similar value should passed along in its place. It’s too bad that the phrase stereotypes Indians as deceitful and un-generous. If you’ve been around Indians, you probably know that is about the farthest thing from the truth. — 30 —
Well, once again, it’s my birthday. I guess when your birthday comes around, it represents another year of growth and lessons learned — and — the opportunity to pause, reflect and appreciate all that we are — and have been. Birthdays also serve as a convenient time to reflect on what’s been accomplished or achieved over the past year. Growing old is a privilege — everyone is getting older, but not everyone is growing older. So since it’s my birthday I thought I’d talk about what I’d like to be when I grow old….
I guess one of the things I think is ok about getting old is that you can, in (hopefully) subtle ways thumb your nose at convention with fewer consequences than when you were younger. Maybe that’s a good goal for when I get old. In many cultures, and in the past around here, older people were revered as the carriers of wisdom and the archivists of the group’s knowledge and experience. Today — not so much. People probably figure any knowledge old people have is outdated. I’ll try not to fall into the “dated” category. I’ve noticed that the least interesting older people that I know are the ones that do the same things, have the same conversations and express the same opinions — over and over and over. This is a hard one, but I’ll try to stay current and not sound like a broken record from the past. I think that generally old people are largely expected to be dignified and respectable — and usually clueless…. and not much else. I was never dignified — or respectable — so I’m not going to start when I’m old. I’ll probably continue to be clueless, but I’m not going the dignified route.
So what do I want to be when I grow old? I want to be my own person, do my own thing, try to make myself (and others) happy, make use of what I’ve learned over the years, learn new things, believe what I know to be true, surround myself with good company — and continue to have fun. Keep checking back here to see if when I get old, I’ve achieved my goals. But today’s only my 85th birthday — let the celebration begin. — 30 —
Tomorrow is a very important day. I know, most of you are thinking that it’s my birthday — and I must admit that my birth is certainly a significant event to be celebrated on August 6th. But, if you can imagine, there is an even more significant event whose anniversary comes up on August 6 every year.
On August 6, 1945 an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion immediately killed an estimated 80,000 people — tens of thousands more died later of radiation exposure. Since one of the current movie hits is “Oppenheimer,” I though it might be an appropriate time to discuss “The Manhattan Project.”
Before the outbreak of war in 1939, a group of American scientists — many of them refugees from fascist regimes in Europe — became concerned with the nuclear weapons research being conducted in Nazi Germany. In 1940, the U.S. government began running its own atomic weapons development program. After the U.S. entry into World War II, the program came under the joint responsibility of the Office of Scientific Research and Development and the War Department. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was tasked with overseeing the construction of the the vast facilities necessary for the top-secret program (The project was codenamed “The Manhattan Project” after the engineering corps’ Manhattan district.)
During the next several years, the program’s scientists worked to produce the key materials for nuclear fission — uranium-235 and plutonium (Pu-239.) Those materials were sent to Los Alamos, New Mexico, where a team led by J. Robert Oppenheimer had the job of turning these materials into a workable atomic bomb. Early in the morning of July 16, 1945, the program conducted its first successful test of an atomic device — a plutonium bomb — at the Trinity test site at Alamogordo, New Mexico.
By the time the plutonium bomb had been tested, the Allied powers had already defeated Germany in Europe. However, Japan vowed to fight to the bitter end in the Pacific. It became apparent to the Allied leaders that Japan had become even more deadly when faced with defeat. In Late July of 1945, Japan’s militarist government rejected the Allied demand for surrender put forth in the Potsdam Declaration, which threatened the Japanese with “prompt and utter destruction” if they refused.
General Douglas Mac Arthur, and other top military commanders, favored continuing the conventional bombing of Japan already underway and following up with a massive invasion. He advised President Truman that such an invasion would result in U.S. casualties of up to 1 million. Secretary of War Henry Stimson, General Dwight Eisenhower and a number of the Manhattan Project scientists had moral reservations against the use of the atomic bomb. Proponents of the A-bomb, including Truman’s Secretary of State believed that the bomb’s devastating power would not only end the war, but also put the U.S. in a dominant position to determine the course of the postwar world. In the end, President Truman decided to use the atomic bomb in the hopes of reducing American casualties and bringing the war to a quick end.
Hiroshima, a manufacturing center, home to about 35,000 people and located about 500 miles from Tokyo, was selected as the first target. The bomb, known as “Little Boy” was dropped by parachute at 8:15 in the morning and exploded 2,000 feet above Hiroshima. Hiroshima’s devastation failed to obtain immediate Japanese surrender. So on August 9, it was decided to drop the second bomb on Kokura, but that city was cloud covered, and it was dropped on Nagasaki — the bomb, named “Fat Man” was dropped at 11:02 that morning.
At noon on August 15, 1945 (Japanese time) Emperor Hirohito announced his country’s surrender in a radio broadcast. The formal surrender agreement was signed on September 2, aboard the U.S. battleship Missouri, anchored in Tokyo Bay. Because of the extent of the devastation, exact death tolls from the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain unknown.
So not only tomorrow, but every day, we should remember that we have the power to destroy the Earth as we know it. We should think about that every day — and maybe, especially, on election day. — 30 —
Last night we were watching jeopardy and one of the contestants missed a question that pictured an animal — the contestant identified it as a buffalo, but the correct answer was a bison. The category, I think, was American History. I can understand the mistake — bison are often called buffalos, and buffalos are often referred to as bison.
I grew up in Oklahoma — often referred to as the old west or maybe the wild west…. it wasn’t, of course, but when I came to the east coast, a lot of people thought I was from “way out west.” But anyhow, when I was growing up these animals were always called buffalos — I don’t remember hearing the word bison when I was young.
So even though I lived in the “American West” and there was a popular song, “Home on the Range,” that had a line in it “… where the buffalo roam,” that song got a fairly important detail wrong — buffalo never roamed in the area, but bison did — and still do.
Buffalo and bison are two distinct animals. Buffalo are native to Africa and Asia. Bison are found in North America and Europe. I knew the answer to the Jeopardy question and I can actually tell the difference between a buffalo and a bison, but I thought maybe I’d do a little extensive research on the subject and I discovered a number of interesting things about both species….
As I mentioned, contrary to the “Home on the Range” song, buffalo do not roam in America. True buffalo are only found in Africa and Asia — bison are only found in North America and Europe. So, admittedly, the two animals do look similar — how do you tell them apart?
Their body shapes are different — that makes it easy to tell them apart from a distance. Bison have a large hump on their shoulders, along with an oversized head that makes them look “front heavy.” Buffalo don’t have a hump and have smaller heads and shoulders — more in proportion to the rest of their bodies. Another way to tell the difference is the horns — bison horns are shorter and sharper than buffalo horns. And bison have a longish, unkempt beard under their chin — they’re sometimes referred to as the “plains hippies.” Buffalo do not have a beard. Bison have a dense, two-layered coat that allows them to survive the extreme temperatures of the Great Plains. They grow a thick, shaggy coat for the winter, and that coat is shed annually each spring. Buffalo have relatively smooth and sleek thin coats and they don’t shed. Living in Africa and souther Asia, they aren’t exposed to such extremes temperatures, so they don’t need to grow a thick bison-like coat.
So if you’re out on the ranch and a big animal roams by, it’s a bison — not a buffalo. And if you’re on Jeopardy and they show you a picture of a large, bovine animal and the category is American History, the answer is bison — bison, not buffalo. — 30 —
