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As a private with the 106th Infantry Division, Kurt Vonnegut, along with five other battalion scouts, wandered behind enemy lines for several days during the Rhineland Campaign and became cut off from their battalion. They were captured by Wehrmacht troops on December 14, 1944 and imprisoned in Dresden, Germany.

While a prisoner, he witnessed the controversial fire bombing of Dresden in February 1945 which destroyed most of the city. The Germans held Vonnegut in an an ad hoc detention facility that had originally been an underground slaughterhouse meat locker. This experience was the inspiration for his famous novel, Slaughterhouse-Five.

A month later he wrote his family from a repatriation camp informing them of his capture and survival:

See the rest of the letter at Letters of Note – Slaughterhouse Five.

Check out this tremendously interesting x-ray image made for speech research by Christine Ericsdotter:

Christine Ericsdotter says “både” (”both”). The sequence is an excerpt from a 20 second X-Ray film registred at the Danderyd Hospital in Stockholm in March 1997.

And a couple more: Read the rest of this entry »

Wikipedia’s policy on spoilers:

Articles on the Internet sometimes feature a “spoiler warning” to alert readers to spoilers in the text, which they may then choose to avoid reading. Wikipedia has previously included such warnings in some articles on works of fiction. Since it is generally expected that the subjects of our articles will be covered in detail, such warnings are considered unnecessary. Therefore, Wikipedia no longer carries spoiler warnings, except for the content disclaimer and section headings (such as “Plot” or “Ending”) which imply the presence of spoilers.

It makes complete sense, but this policy change is something I would have liked to know BEFORE I read the plot summary of The Road, a novel I WAS looking forward to reading.

Chris Martin and Mick Dawson set off in a 23ft long and 6ft wide boat from Choshi, Japan on Friday 8th May 2009 and arrived in the San Francisco Bay under the Golden Gate Bridge last Friday 13th November 2009 becoming the first crew to row unsupported across the North Pacific Ocean.

Chris and Mick photograph their historic entrance into the San Francisco Bay.

Within seconds I looked up and saw the underside of the bridge. A shotgun sounded off to our left indicating that we had made it. We had rowed across the North Pacific Ocean. After over half a year of giving everything we had to the ocean and this breathtaking, life changing an historic moment was our most welcome reward. I looked round at Mick who held out his hand which I gladly shook. The rest of the trip into land was a bit surreal.

Check out the video that Mick produced in preparation for his attempt:

[Golden Gate Endeavour | YouTube]

They kept a blog of their daily progress at http://www.goldengateendeavour.com/.

How many of the top 100 most common English words can you guess?

I got more than I expected with 72.

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Jimmy Page on BBC1 in 1957.

When asked by host Huw Wheldon what he wanted to do after schooling, Page says, “I want to do biological research [to find a cure for] cancer, if it isn’t discovered by then”.

Instead he went on to form one of the world’s greatest rock bands, Led Zeppelin.

Led Zeppelin in 1969. From left to right: John Bonham, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones.

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2012: “An eye-popping, insult to the intelligence strictly for the kiddies and crackpot doomsday enthusiasts.” — Kam Williams, News Blaze

The Men Who Stare at Goats: “Either someone missed the memo about other people’s LSD trips being a colossal drag, or else they fed it to a goat.” — Tim Robey, Daily Telegraph

The Fourth Kind: “going to great lengths to make us believe the events depicted in this movie are real, but it’s about as a real as the date I had with Jennifer Aniston in my dreams the other night.” — Willie Waffle, WaffleMovies.com

Couples Retreat: “during the shark attack . . . the sympathy was not necessarily with the humans in the water” — Andrea Chase, Killer Movie Reviews

Law Abiding Citizen: “Say what you will about Death Wish, but Charles Bronson was never boring.” — Glenn Whipp, Los Angeles Times

The Box: “Whatever you do, do not accept delivery of The Box, a package that doesn’t know where it is going nor how to get there.” —David Hiltbrand, Philadelphia Inquirer

Astro Boy: “a big selling point for my kids to see this movie was the line, ‘I have machine guns… in my butt?’ Viewer, be warned.” — Kevin Carr, 7M Pictures

This made me laugh. It’s an animation about Dock Ellis’ “legendary LSD no hitter”.

YouTube - No Mas Presents: Dock Ellis & The LSD No-No by James Blagden.

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Everything you need to know about the first decade of the twenty first century in seven minutes, according to Newsweek:

[Newsweek Presents The Decade In Seven Minutes | Youtube]

A short film I created for my video sketchbook class, Workout Triptych: