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rynner2 What a Cad!
Great Old One Joined: 13 Dec 2008 Total posts: 21365 Location: Under the moon Gender: Male |
 Posted: 12-09-2013 09:11 Post subject: |
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John Billingham
John Billingham, who has died aged 83, was a former RAF officer who headed Nasa’s Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (Seti) programme at the Ames Research Center in California.
6:49PM BST 11 Sep 2013
The hunt for intelligent extraterrestrial life began in 1956 when Frank Drake, a young astronomer at the University of California at Santa Cruz, pointed a 25ft radio telescope at the Pleiades, 440 light years from Earth, and saw two spikes on the read-out that should not have been there. Though the spikes proved to be a false alarm, Drake realised that if there was intelligent life out there, capable of sending signals, the new technology of radio telescopy could pick them up.
In 1970 Billingham, an expert in space medicine at Nasa’s Ames Research Center, commissioned an engineering study that proposed the agency should establish a Seti programme. The project, christened Project Cyclops, envisioned an array of antennae that would scan multiple frequencies. Though Nasa never formally proposed Project Cyclops (its $10 billion price tag proved its undoing), it began funding small projects to study extraterrestrial intelligence, and in 1976 Billingham was appointed head of the Extraterrestrial Research Division at Ames.
However Nasa’s Seti programme was beset by problems from the start. In 1978 Senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin, famous for his “Golden Fleece” awards (given to government projects that he deemed wasteful), awarded a “Golden Fleece of the Month” to Nasa’s Seti initiative and persuaded Congress to reject a $2 million appropriation for the project. In 1982, after some discreet lobbying, Billingham managed to insert Seti into a federal budget proposal, thereby arousing the wrath of Senator Proxmire. To the rescue came the astronomer and popular science writer, Carl Sagan, then at the height of his fame. As a result of his lobbying, Proxmire, who fancied himself a progressive, dropped his opposition to the programme.
During the 1980s Nasa devoted very little money to Seti, but in 1990 Billingham got the go-ahead for a $100 million 10-year Seti project with two distinct parts. The first was an all-sky survey that would scan the heavens for extraterrestrial signals. The second was a targeted search that would take time to examine individual star systems. Its inauguration was Columbus Day, October 12 1992, the symbolic beginning of a new age of exploration. “We sail into the future, just as Columbus did on this day 500 years ago,” Billingham announced grandly. “We accept the challenge of searching for a new world.”
But the press and public, cynical after decades of UFO “sightings”, had broadly concluded that, outside of The X files, Star Trek and The War of the Worlds, there really was no one “out there”. Much fun was had at Billingham’s expense when it emerged that Nasa was discussing an international protocol to guide politicians on how they should respond in the event of aliens making contact. “Maybe Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner should talk to them,” one newspaper suggested. “They always did a great job on Star Trek with that 'We are from different worlds but respect your culture’ speech.”
But Billingham was having none of it: “A lot of people think this is silly, but we need to give a lot of thought to a reply,” he explained. “It is not a question just for scientists and engineers.”
Unfortunately for Billingham, other politicians were willing to fill the gap left by Proxmire, who had retired from the Senate in 1989. In 1990 Silvio Conte, a congressman from Massachusetts, decried the search for “little green men with misshapen heads” at a time “when good people of America can’t find affordable housing”. Holding up headlines such as “Space Aliens Stealing Our Frogs” and “Magic Ray from UFO Cures 22 People”, Conte noted that, if Billingham was looking for extraterrestrials, it would be a lot cheaper to buy a tabloid. 
Although Nasa’s Seti programme survived Conte’s barbs, it did not survive the opposition of Senator Richard Bryan of Nevada. In 1993, at the height of the national concern over budget deficits, Bryan persuaded the Senate to end federal funding.
Bryan had killed Nasa’s Seti, but he had by no means killed Seti itself. Operating as the Seti Institute, a non-profit institute based in Mountain View, California, Billingham and a team of scientists cobbled together financing from universities and from private benefactors to keep the programme going and to build the Allen Telescopic Array (after Paul Allen, a co-founder of Microsoft, who gave $25 million to the cause).
Though it has detected no little green men as yet, the Seti Institute has achieved respectability through discoveries in other areas — notably so-called extremophiles and exoplanets. Extremophiles are microbial organisms that can survive in extreme environments — such as inside nuclear reactors, in rock or in super-hot deep-ocean vents. Their existence — unknown until a few years ago — shows that life can survive in many more places than scientists used to think possible. Exoplanets are simply planets outside our solar system. These were assumed to exist, but one was not actually detected until 1995. Now astronomers are finding hundreds more.
These discoveries have led to a new field of astrobiology, the speculative study of life beyond Earth which includes searching for extraterrestrial life at the most microbial level, while the exoplanets are being investigated by Nasa’s Kepler mission, launched in 2009. As well as listening out for signals from ET, today’s Seti Institute is running projects in planetary science, exobiology, and related areas.
But Billingham always lived in hope that man would one day find intelligent life on other planets. In 2007 he resigned from an extraterrestrial study group set up by the International Academy of Astronautics, concerned over a lack of public discussion about the possible consequences of sending signals deep into space. “We’re talking about initiating communication with other civilisations, but we know nothing of their goals, capabilities or intent,” he warned. “Who will speak for Earth if aliens do reply? Are we inviting Armageddon?’’
John Billingham was born on March 18 1930, in Worcester. After studying Medicine at Oxford University, he spent six years as a medical officer in the RAF before joining Nasa in 1963 as head of its environmental physiology branch at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, helping to design spacesuits for astronauts. He moved to the Ames Research Center in 1965 and spent the next few years in Nasa’s biotechnology divisions while he worked on Seti. He formally became head of Nasa’s Office of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence in 1991. When funding was withdrawn in 1993 he became a senior scientist at the Seti Institute.
His wife, Margaret, died in 2009. Their two sons survive him.
John Billingham, born March 18 1930, died August 4 2013
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/10302934/John-Billingham.html |
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| ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17933 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 13-09-2013 02:14 Post subject: |
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| Mythopoeika wrote: | Sad to hear that. Pohl was one of my favourites.  |
Me too, only just read the news now. I was offline for almost two weeks. I regard Gateway as being his best novel. |
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| JamesWhitehead Piffle Prospector Joined: 02 Aug 2001 Total posts: 5779 Location: Manchester, UK Gender: Male |
| Posted: 13-09-2013 11:51 Post subject: |
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Ray Dolby has died at 80
A household name, though only sound-geeks would probably have known him as Ray.
Time was when noisy movies were prefaced by a ghastly bragging Dolby self-advertisement. The stages of development from tape noise reduction to digital surround are traced on this page
Many of us became familiar with the name through the ubiquitous Dolby B system, which mysteriously boosted the popularity of the compact cassette format. A similar effect could be simulated by holding a wet dishcloth to your ears.  |
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| CarlosTheDJ Dazed and confused for so long its not true
Great Old One Joined: 01 Feb 2007 Total posts: 1927 Location: Sussex Age: 37 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 13-09-2013 13:05 Post subject: |
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But Dolby C! And Dolby S!
The equivalent to a dry dishcloth and a duster. |
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| JamesWhitehead Piffle Prospector Joined: 02 Aug 2001 Total posts: 5779 Location: Manchester, UK Gender: Male |
| Posted: 13-09-2013 16:07 Post subject: |
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The Radio 4 obit. show is on as I type this with a piece on Ray Dolby.
They asked an acquaintance what impression he had made on a visit to his studio.
"Quiet, he was very quiet really."
I suppose he hardly hissed at all!  |
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| gncxx King-Size Canary
Great Old One Joined: 25 Aug 2001 Total posts: 13561 Location: Eh? Gender: Male |
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| JamesWhitehead Piffle Prospector Joined: 02 Aug 2001 Total posts: 5779 Location: Manchester, UK Gender: Male |
| Posted: 13-09-2013 18:54 Post subject: |
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I especially enjoy the sound of the needle coming out of the groove! |
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| ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17933 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 16-09-2013 00:47 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Erudite, much published, and witty man of letters
A career that spanned advertising, publishing and broadcasting
http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/erudite-much-published-and-witty-man-of-letters-1.1526925
Bernard Share, who has died of heart failure, was a man of letters whose career spanned more than 60 years. He produced novels and stories for adults and children, journalistic writings and book reviews, as well as editing Books Ireland and Cara magazines, in parallel with his early career as an advertising copywriter. He also served as general secretary of Clé, the Irish book publishers’ association.
Bernard Vivian Share was born in May 1930 in London, to Frederick, a civil servant, and May, who had both emigrated from Ireland. He spent his first 17 years there, attended school in Pinner, Middlesex, developed an interest in Irish literature and calligraphy and sang in the local church choir. The family had links to Dublin’s northside, and he remained proud of this heritage.
After attending Trinity College Dublin, where he became a “scholar” and co-founded the literary magazine Icarus, Share lectured in modern languages in Australia and Ireland.
Back in Ireland and working at O’Kennedy Brindley, a leading advertising agency, he met his collaborator and kindred spirit, illustrator Billy Bolger.
Together they joined Janus Advertising in Parnell Square, where they sometimes wore cut-out Mickey Mouse ears while going about their daily work. In 1962 they set up their own creative consultancy, Verbiage Enterprises. Their collaboration continued until Bolger’s death earlier this year.
Meanwhile Share contributed articles and book reviews to The Irish Times and later Hibernia Fortnightly Review. He wrote news features about Australian politics and was an early advocate of the fiction of Anthony Burgess, relishing his skilful wordplay.
A generous reviewer, Share’s kindness was not always repaid. Poet and journalist Bruce Williamson found his early fiction owed too much to Brian O’Nolan, then writing an Irish Times satirical column as Myles na Gopaleen.
Another reviewer chided an early Share work for sexism, a word then coming into vogue. In both cases it could be argued that Share’s multilayered jokes had eluded reviewers.
The London Independent’s Boyd Tonkin spotted what Bernard Share was at when reviewing Transit in 2009: “ . . . a deliciously sly and offbeat novel of time-travel, scrambled pasts, abandoned hopes and Ireland, old and new. If Samuel Beckett ever returned to write a Doctor Who special, it might closely resemble Transit”.
His works included novels, satires, and a series of six children’s books with Billy Bolger, The Bed That Went Whoosh. Comedian Spike Milligan said his novel Inish (1966) was the funniest book he had ever read.
His love of wordplay yielded a humorous examination of Irish slang in the English language. Slanguage was a commercial and critical success, first published in 1997 and reprinted many times since. In similar vein Dublinese – Know What I Mean? followed in 2007.
He was a frequent contributor to Radio Éireann’s Sunday Miscellany under the enlightened editorship of Maxwell Sweeney, and he also broadcast on Australian radio.
His factual book on Ireland during the second World War, The Emergency (1987) spun off into a celebrated satirical fantasy, The Finner Faction (1989), with guest appearances by General de Gaulle and his wife. Other notable books included Naming Names (2001) and In Time of Civil War (2006).
Overall he produced upwards of 20 books, making a living by storytelling, consistently engaging with and amusing his readers. He is survived by his sons Peregrine (Perry) and Tristram, and his sister Jackie Ord. |
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| ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17933 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 16-09-2013 22:35 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Chin Peng: Malaysia communist guerrilla dies in Thailand
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24105976
This file handout photo taken in 1955 and received from the National Archives of Malaysia shows former leader of the banned Communist Party of Malaya, Chin Peng (L), during negotiations between the communists and government in Kuala Kubu Bharu
Chin Peng (L) fought alongside the British during the war but later turned on them in his battle for a Communist state
Chin Peng, a Malaysian guerrilla who led a fierce Communist insurgency against British forces after World War Two, has died, Thai officials say.
The 90-year-old died in a Bangkok hospital after years living in exile.
He fought alongside the British during the Japanese occupation of Malaya, but in 1948 began a struggle to establish an independent Communist state.
About 10,000 people are thought to have been killed during The Emergency, as the insurgency came to be known.
It was a campaign of jungle warfare against colonial rule that resulted in accusations of brutality on both sides.
A senior Malaysian opposition figure, Lim Kit Siang, wrote that his death marked the: "end of an era. Whether one agrees or not with his struggle, his place in history is assured", the Associated Press news agency reported.
His funeral is set to be held at a Buddhist temple in Bangkok, reports say.
For 12 years he and his band of predominantly ethnic Chinese fighters tied down a force of more than 100,000 Commonwealth troops despite being outnumbered nearly 20 to one.
After Malaya became independent in 1957 he continued to fight the government there, but communism failed to take root and he went to live in exile, eventually settling in Thailand.
Though the Communists signed a peace treaty with the Malaysian government in 1989, Chin Peng was not allowed to return home, with officials saying it would anger too many Malaysians who lost loved ones during the insurgency.
The Malaysian government rejected many applications from Chin Peng to return to his homeland. |
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| rynner2 What a Cad!
Great Old One Joined: 13 Dec 2008 Total posts: 21365 Location: Under the moon Gender: Male |
| Posted: 24-09-2013 09:59 Post subject: |
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Commander Giles Binney
Commander Giles Binney, the naval aviator who has died aged 89, survived enemy and friendly fire, and being shot down while flying as a passenger.
6:41PM BST 23 Sep 2013
Between April and September 1951, during the Korean War, Binney flew Fairey Fireflies with 812 Naval Air Squadron from the fleet carrier Glory. There were, he noted, three main dangers: decklandings at sea; the enemy; and friendly fire.
Binney made 100 decklandings without problem. However on June 28 1951 he was bounced by an American Thunderjet and a single hole appeared in his port wing. Binney never understood how anyone could mistake his Firefly, painted in broad black and white recognition stripes, for a Chinese or Korean Yak fighter, and angrily followed his attacker back to the US airbase at Sunwon, south of Seoul. There Binney found his attacker in the midst of claiming that he had shot down a Yak, and roundly disabused him. 
Then on July 1 1951 Binney committed a cardinal sin. After strafing a railway bridge he was, in his own words, “so pleased with the results” that he returned for a second go. This time there was a burst of anti-aircraft fire from the alerted enemy. A bullet penetrated the cockpit floor and passed through his boot, tearing open his flying suit, piercing the map he was holding and bursting against the gun[s]ight. Though his goggles were sprayed with molten lead he was otherwise unharmed and made a safe landing.
On 59 flying days on nine patrols off Korea in 1951, Glory made 2,762 aircraft launches, and her aircraft flew 7,231 hours. Binney was mentioned-in-despatches.
Thomas Victor Giles Binney was born January 21 1926 in Poona, India, the son of Lt Col Victor Binney of the Bombay Sappers and Miners, who won the DSO while fighting in Mesopotamia in 1917. Thomas was educated at Wellington and learned to sail with “Ted” Fegen (later Captain ES Fegen, VC) in the Norfolk Broads.
Binney joined the Royal Naval College at its wartime home, Eaton Hall, Cheshire, in 1944, and spent some months in MTB 616 before boarding the troopship Athlone Castle to join the battlecruiser Renown at Durban.
After five years as a teenager in wartime Britain he found his spell in South Africa “sheer magic”. On VJ-day he was a midshipman in the cruiser Belfast, one of the first Allied warships to enter Formosa and Shanghai.
Returning to England in 1946 Binney was keen to specialise in gunnery but after a single familiarisation flight in a Tiger Moth, he determined to become a naval aviator, attending the Naval Elementary Flying Training School at Syerston, Nottinghamshire.
Binney first flew solo after the unusually short time of 6 hours 25 minutes. However his career nearly ended prematurely on September 28 1949 when, while he was flying in a 24-strong formation, the engine of his Firefly blew up. The aircraft shook violently and then plummeted downwards, narrowly missing the other aircraft in the formation.
After Korea, Binney qualified as an Air Warfare Instructor (AWI) and throughout the 1950s flew intensively in a wide variety of aircraft, including jets. In 1956 he was given command of 804 NAS, flying Scimitars from the carrier Hermes. Subsequently Binney was naval attaché in Ethiopia (1964-66) and naval attaché in Lisbon (1972-1975).
Binney was shot down after he had finished his own active flying career. On May 11 1974, while on a fact-finding tour of Mozambique with other Lisbon-based attachés, he was a passenger in a Dakota when it was hit by a ground-to-air missile at 10,000ft.  Binney had the sang-froid to note the precise nature of the damage and to admire the pilot’s airmanship as he landed on a jungle airstrip. The tour was continued in a replacement aircraft.
Binney was appointed OBE in 1976 .
Giles Binney married, in 1952, Diana David, daughter of the station commander at Syerston. She survives him with their three sons and a daughter.
Giles Binney, born January 21 1926, died August 13 2013
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/10329181/Commander-Giles-Binney.html |
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| gncxx King-Size Canary
Great Old One Joined: 25 Aug 2001 Total posts: 13561 Location: Eh? Gender: Male |
| Posted: 02-10-2013 22:57 Post subject: |
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Full obit:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-24372224
| Quote: | Best-selling US author Tom Clancy has died at the age of 66, his publisher Penguin has confirmed.
Clancy wrote a string of best-selling spy and military thrillers. His 17th novel, Command Authority, is due out in December.
Several of his books featuring CIA analyst Jack Ryan have been adapted into successful Hollywood films.
The former insurance broker died in a Baltimore hospital near his Maryland home, according to reports.
Clancy, who died on Tuesday, was remembered as "a master of his craft" by Tom Weldon, chief executive of Penguin Random House UK.
"Tom Clancy changed readers' expectations of what a thriller could do," he said. "He will be greatly missed by millions of fans in the UK and around the world."
'Real gentleman'
Written in his spare time, The Hunt for Red October (1984) was Clancy's first published novel and sold more than five million copies.
President Ronald Reagan helped to fuel the success of the book when he called it a "perfect yarn".
Archive: Tom Clancy talks about his prophetic '9/11' plot
The novel was made into a film in 1990, starring Alec Baldwin as Ryan and Sir Sean Connery as Soviet submarine captain Marko Ramius...
Clancy was known for his technically detailed espionage and military science storylines. One, written in 1994, told of a crazed Japan Airlines pilot who flies into the Capitol building in Washington. |
People wanting an easy gift for their dads will be mourning as much as Clancy's fans today. Didn't realise he was "only" 66, I thought he was in his eighties or something. Also another prophet of September 11th 2001, alongside Stephen King, Alan Moore and a load of others. He seemed more credible, though. |
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| ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17933 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 04-10-2013 23:30 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Herman Wallace dies after release from 41 years in solitary
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24404409
This undated image shows inmate Herman Wallace at the Louisiana State Penitentiary
Supporters had asked Louisiana to release Wallace on humanitarian grounds
A Louisiana man released from prison on Tuesday after 41 years in solitary confinement has died of liver cancer.
Herman Wallace, 71, died on Friday morning, his lawyer told the BBC.
He was freed after a federal judge ruled his 1974 murder conviction violated his right to a fair trial.
Wallace, one of the so-called Angola Three convicted in the murder of a prison guard, was diagnosed with cancer this year. They always maintained their innocence.
Herman Wallace, left, and his legal team after his release from prison on 1 October 2013
Herman Wallace, left, and his legal team were seen following his release from prison
"He passed away early this morning among people who cared for him very much," Wallace's lawyer, George Kendall, told the BBC.
One of the Angola Three, Robert King, was released in 2001. Wallace and another man, Albert Woodfox, remained incarcerated, isolated in tiny jail cells and allowed out to shower or exercise one hour a day.
'You're free'
The men, initially imprisoned for robbery, were the object of a long-running international campaign arguing they were wrongly convicted of the murder because of their association with the militant Black Panther Party..
Surviving 41 years in solitary
On Tuesday, Judge Brian Jackson ruled Wallace's conviction was unconstitutional because women were barred from serving on his jury, and ordered him freed.
Louisiana State Penitentiary, where the three men were held, is nicknamed Angola for the plantation that once stood on its site, worked by slaves kidnapped from Africa.
Wallace was in a nursing clinic at Hunt Correctional Center in St Gabriel, Louisiana, on Tuesday morning when he heard the news.
"I said, 'Herman, you are a free man,'" Carine Williams, one of his lawyers, told the BBC.
By many accounts, the evidence against him was weak, says the BBC's Tara McKelvey.
There were no fingerprints at the place where Miller was killed, our correspondent says.
Even Miller's widow, Teenie Verret, said she had doubts about the case against the Angola Three - and hoped they would be treated fairly.
On Friday, Amnesty International said Louisiana prison authorities had put Wallace "through hell".
"No one should have to endure 40-plus years in solitary confinement... It's some small consolation that [Wallace] died a free man after the conviction was finally overturned," said Amnesty International campaigner Tessa Murphy.
Analysis
Tara McKelvey
BBC News Magazine
In a 6ft-by-9ft cell - just under 3m-by-2m - Wallace stayed in shape by lifting weights that he constructed out of old newspapers.
He read material about the Black Panther Party, a 1960s revolutionary group - and anything else he could get his hands on, and kept up with current events.
Wallace replied to letters - he got a steady stream of mail - and worked on his appeal |
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| skinny Roaring Fortean
Great Old One Joined: 30 May 2010 Total posts: 215 Location: Adelaide Age: 42 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 09-10-2013 01:23 Post subject: |
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Former Pogues guitarist, vocalist and songwriter Phil Chevron has succumbed to cancer. I saw Phil with the Pogues in 1989 when they visited Australia and Japan on the If I Should Fall From Grace With God tour. One of my favourite Pogues songs is Thousands Are Sailing, from that brilliant album, and it was written by Phil. Also had a chance to chat online to him about the song last year. He ran a Pogues discussion board for a few years and was very sweet in the way he bantered with the fans there. A cool guy.
Sail on, Phil.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-09/pogues-guitarist-philip-chevron-dies-of-cancer/5010704 |
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| Spookdaddy Cuckoo Joined: 24 May 2006 Total posts: 3924 Location: Midwich Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 09-10-2013 08:58 Post subject: |
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I was playing, If I Should Fall from Grace with God, in memory of Mr Chevron last night.
I saw The Pogues several times - always fantastic gigs, if at times little chaotic.
RIP |
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| Anome_ Faceless Man
Great Old One Joined: 23 May 2002 Total posts: 5377 Location: Left, and to the back. Age: 45 Gender: Male |
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