Bismarck recordings found in Edison's lab

The only known recordings of Germany’s legendary Chancellor Otto von Bismarck have surfaced in the former laboratory of US inventor Thomas Edison.

The New York Times reported on Tuesday that the content of the wax cylinder records, which had been stored in a cabinet for decades, was only uncovered after the curator of the Edison museum in New Jersey played them on special phonograph.

Made by Edison’s assistant Theodor Wangemann in 1889 and 1890, the recordings include the only known sample of Bismarck’s voice, as well as recitations by German military strategist Helmuth von Moltke and several musical pieces.

“This is sensational,” said Ulrich Lappenküper, director of the Otto von Bismarck Foundation in Friedrichsruh, Germany told the paper.

Known as the Iron Chancellor, Bismarck united Germany in 1871. At the time of the recording he was 74, and still the political leader of the German Empire.

The New York Times reported he recited poetry in English, Latin, French and German to Wangemann at his residence in Friedrichruh. The researchers were also surprised to hear he had also spoken parts of the French national anthem, the Marseillaise, considering the statesman had played a key role in Prussia’s defeat of France just prior to German unification.

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This & That

Via Leo Spark

SENSE OF FLYING

Via Theo Spark

What´s it like flying down a mountain at 250 km/h? Espen Fadnes - The World's Fastest Flying Human Being 2010 - and Project Managers Goovinn teamed up to communicate the experience of flying. "SENSE OF FLYING" came out of the collaboration.

Turn up the volume, experience it, share it.

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Via Don, L&P

Gallup state numbers predict huge Obama loss

Via III Percent Patriots

Gallup released their annual state-by-state presidential approval numbers yesterday, and the results should have 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue very worried. If President Obama carries only those states where he had a net positive approval rating in 2011 (e.g. Michigan where he is up 48 percent to 44 percent), Obama would lose the 2012 election to the Republican nominee 323 electoral votes to 215.

Gallup adds:

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FBI Uses Chainsaw In Raid On Wrong Fitchburg Apartment

Via On to Liberty

It’s going to be a while before things get back to normal for Judy Sanchez and her three-year-old daughter.

Last Thursday, a team of FBI agents swarmed her apartment building as part of a massive citywide drug and weapons gang raid.

Trouble is, Sanchez lives in apartment 2R.

The suspect they were after is in 2F.

At 6:04 last Thursday morning, just before Sanchez’ alarm was set to go off, she heard a pounding outside her second floor apartment.

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Occupy Wall Street protesters throw condoms, drown out speakers at Rhode Island pro-life rally

Demonstrators from the Occupy Wall Street movement threw condoms on Catholic schoolgirls, refused to allow a Catholic priest to give a closing prayer, and shouted down a pro-life speaker at a Rhode Island right to life rally on Thursday, according to its organizer. The event marked the third time protesters associated with the movement have disrupted a pro-life meeting in a week.

About two-dozen members of Occupy Providence hiked from Burnside Park to the 39th Annual Pro-Life State House Rally organized by the Rhode Island State Right to Life Committee on Thursday.

The pro-life organization’s executive director, Barth E. Bracy, told LifeSiteNews.com that, near the end of the rally, the Occupiers “strategically fanned out with military precision.”

That’s when they “started showering condoms down on some of the girls from a Catholic high school.”

They gathered around speakers at the podium, shouting them down or otherwise jostling them and members of the audience.

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Sheriff Mack for Congress

CONGRATULATIONS Sheriff Mack for being selected as one of the top 10 challenger candidates. The formal announcement will be made at a reception to be held Febuary 3rd and 4th at the historic Johnson Homested on the banks of the Colorado. Following the announcement the weekend will feature empowering speakers, exhibits, workshops and entertainment

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Drowned in the swamps of Florida

Vox Popoli
Verbatim Post

The charade of the Newt Gingrich comes to its inevitable end:

Last week, New York magazine’s John Heilemann pointed out a deep truth about Newt Gingrich’s peculiar presidential campaign: The very media elite that Gingrich delights in hammering has actually been in his corner all along. The press likes a horse race; the press likes outsize personalities; the press favors an underdog; and the press even takes a strange sort of delight in being ruthlessly attacked.

Of course most political reporters don’t want Gingrich in the White House. But they’ve had every incentive to keep him in the headlines and overrate his odds of defeating Mitt Romney for the nomination.

Tuesday night’s Floridian drubbing won’t change those incentives, so we can expect a last burst of media chatter about how Gingrich could still recover, ride a wilderness campaign to a Super Tuesday comeback and fight Romney tooth and nail all the way to the convention. But chatter is all it will be. For Gingrich and his media enablers alike, the dream died in Florida....

The sooner Gingrich is out, the better. The only substantive choice is between Mitt Romney and Ron Paul. Even if Romney ultimately turns out to be the clear and unabashed choice of Republicans, as I expect him to be, at least people will have been presented a clear choice between debt-laden doom and the only way out of the banking abyss.

Burglar gets beaten, thrown off balcony

Via Theo Spark

EQUIPPING THE GUERRILLA FIGHTER, PART THREE (THE SUSTAINMENT LOAD)

Recognizing the importance of always striving to reduce the mobility-destroying load-bearing requirements of the guerrilla fighter, it is critical to first dispel some long-cherished myths regarding the historical American woodsman-scout. When most Americans consider the archetype of the woodsman-scout, their visualization typically involves a frontiersman (eastern long-hunter or western “mountain man”) slipping silently and effortlessly through the timber, carrying everything he owns in a shoulder-slung “possibles” pouch or a small knapsack slung across his back. This, like the cowboy-plainsman with his bedroll strapped behind the cantle of his saddle, is for the most part, nothing more than Thoreauan mythology.

Prior to the World War Two introduction of realistically practical off-road motorized transport, long-term travel in the backcountry almost always involved the use of livestock for transportation of personnel and logistics. Guerrilla and irregular forces have historically made wide-spread use of the local indigenous beast of burden as well, whenever possible, even as recently as the GWOT (SF made rather extensive use of animal transport in the early days of OEF, thanks to the Northern Alliance's reliance on horseback transportation. Both SOF and conventional forces have continued to make use of pack animals, in various degrees, according to my sources, especially in the more remote, extremely alpine regions of Afghanistan.--J.M.). Nevertheless, for the light-infantry force, the paradigm in large part remains the focused on man-portable sustainment load-bearing equipment, in the form of rucksacks.

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