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.45chel
Joined: 26 Oct 2007
Posts: 3043
Location: Chambersburg
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 Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2008 9:36 am Post subject: No, Really! |
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I'm sure others have already heard this one, but I'm posting it anyway, so there!
(It wasn't guilty laugh worthy, hence the new thread.)
Secret Agent Chef
| Quote: | Documents: Julia Child part of WWII-era spy ring
By BRETT J. BLACKLEDGE and RANDY HERSCHAFT – 6 hours ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — Famed chef Julia Child shared a secret with Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg and Chicago White Sox catcher Moe Berg at a time when the Nazis threatened the world.
They served in an international spy ring managed by the Office of Strategic Services, an early version of the CIA created in World War II by President Franklin Roosevelt.
The full secret comes out Thursday, all of the names and previously classified files identifying nearly 24,000 spies who formed the first centralized intelligence effort by the United States. The National Archives, which this week released a list of the names found in the records, will make available for the first time all 750,000 pages identifying the vast spy network of military and civilian operatives.
They were soldiers, actors, historians, lawyers, athletes, professors, reporters. But for several years during World War II, they were known simply as the OSS. They studied military plans, created propaganda, infiltrated enemy ranks and stirred resistance among foreign troops.
Some of those on the list have been identified previously as having worked for the OSS, but their personnel records never have been available before. Those records would show why they were hired, jobs they were assigned to and perhaps even missions they pursued while working for the agency.
Among the more than 35,000 OSS personnel files are applications, commendations and handwritten notes identifying young recruits who, like Child, Goldberg and Berg, earned greater acclaim in other fields — Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a historian and special assistant to President Kennedy; Sterling Hayden, a film and television actor whose work included a role in "The Godfather"; and Thomas Braden, an author whose "Eight Is Enough" book inspired the 1970s television series.
Other notables identified in the files include John Hemingway, son of author Ernest Hemingway; Quentin and Kermit Roosevelt, sons of President Theodore Roosevelt, and Miles Copeland, father of Stewart Copeland, drummer for the band The Police.
The release of the OSS personnel files uncloaks one of the last secrets from the short-lived wartime intelligence agency, which for the most part later was folded into the CIA after President Truman disbanded it in 1945.
"I think it's terrific," said Elizabeth McIntosh, 93, a former OSS agent now living in Woodbridge, Va. "They've finally, after all these years, they've gotten the names out. All of these people had been told never to mention they were with the OSS."
The CIA had resisted releasing OSS records for decades. But former CIA Director William Casey, himself an OSS veteran, cleared the way for transfer of millions of OSS documents to the National Archives when he took over the agency in 1981. The personnel files are the latest to be made public.
Information about OSS involvement was so guarded that relatives often couldn't confirm a family member's work with the group.
Walter Mess, who handled covert OSS operations in Poland and North Africa, said he kept quiet for more than 50 years, only recently telling his wife of 62 years about his OSS activity.
"I was told to keep my mouth shut," said Mess, now 93 and living in Falls Church, Va.
The files will offer new information even for those most familiar with the agency. Charles Pinck, president of the OSS Society created by former OSS agents and their relatives, said the nearly 24,000 employees included in the archives far exceeds previous estimates of 13,000.
The newly released documents will clarify these and other issues, said William Cunliffe, an archivist who has worked extensively with the OSS records at the National Archives.
"We're saying the OSS was a lot bigger than they were saying," Cunliffe said. |
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jUNOHxDTQoehoT3FAda6jBvSN4uQD92HQ5O80
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Pink Elephant in the Room
Joined: 09 May 2008
Posts: 162
Location: in the corner
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| Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2008 9:48 am Post subject: |
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I've known that for years! That's where she met her husband. But I always thought that was public knowledge.
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.45chel
Joined: 26 Oct 2007
Posts: 3043
Location: Chambersburg
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| Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2008 9:57 am Post subject: |
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Pshht.
Not everyone has super secret squirrel knowledge, Ellie!
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.45chel
Joined: 26 Oct 2007
Posts: 3043
Location: Chambersburg
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| Posted: Mon Nov 03, 2008 9:38 am Post subject: |
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My excitement at reading the title was quickly deflated by the picture.
Eight-Armed Animal Preceded Dinosaurs
| Quote: | Oct. 30, 2008 -- An eight-armed creature that looked more like a modern party favor than a living animal colonized a large section of the world's oceans over 300 million years before the first dinosaurs emerged, suggests a new study.
The findings represent the first comparable animal fossils from the Ediacaran Period, 635 to 541 million years ago, which appear in two drastically different preservation environments -- black shale of South China and quartz rock of South Australia.
"According to paleogeographic reconstructions, South China and South Australia were close to each other at the time, belonging to a supercontinent called Gondwana," lead author Maoyan Zhu told Discovery News.
Zhu, a scientist at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, first helped to make the China/Aussie connection two years ago during a Beijing conference. He showed a photo of the unusual eight-armed creature, called Eoandromeda octobrachiata, to co-author James Gehling of the South Australia Museum.
"He was so surprised and immediately opened his laptop and showed me images of new fossils uncovered from a new locality at the Flinders Ranges of South Australia," Zhu said. "We wondered if these were the same fossils."
Zhu, Gehling and their colleagues collected eight compressions of the animals from the Doushantuo Formation at Wenghui, China. They then traveled to Flinders Ranges, Australia, and collected seven specimens, leaving 31 others on two excavated and reassembled beds.
The findings are published in the November issue of Geology.
There is no question the creature, believed to represent one type of animal, had a lot of arms.
"The eight arms are clearly preserved in our specimens," Zhu said, adding that the arms were tubular and in close contact with each other, but not joined.
He and his colleagues believe the animal was a soft-bodied, dome-shaped organism that lived on seabeds and fed by absorbing dissolved nutrients from the ambient environment.
Before the latest fossils were found, some researchers identified the creatures as lichens or fungus-like organisms, but Zhu and his team suspect that at least some Ediacara fossils represent now-extinct diploblastic animals, or creatures that possess only two cellular layers separated by a jelly-type substance.
"Diploblastic animals are common creatures on present day Earth," he said, mentioning that jellyfish, corals and sea anemones belong to the group.
"These animals (display) radial symmetry but lack complex organs, as shown by E. octobrachiata," he added.
The multi-armed creature, and several other early life forms, went extinct around 542 million years ago, which Zhu said, "left empty niches for the subsequent Cambrian explosion of complex animals." Representatives of nearly all existent animals emerged at this time, when a rapid increase in oxygen made respiration and metabolism possible.
In a separate paper, Shuhai Xiao, a researcher in the Department of Geosciences at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and colleague Marc Laflamme provide an overview of Ediacara fossils.
In the paper, which has been accepted for publication in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution, Xiao and Laflamme agree that, "Ediacara biota bridges the cryptic evolution of multicellular life in the early Ediacaran and the extraordinary radiation of animals in the Cambrian period."
In addition to the eight-armed creature, they describe other early living things that looked like leaves, shells, stars and something almost akin to a peace symbol.
Xiao and Laflamme hope that as the Ediacara fossil database grows ever larger, more mysteries about these very early organisms will be solved. |
I wanted a monster, darnit! Something giant with cavernous jaws and sharp pointy teeth dripping with an acid drool of death.
Something that crazy Korean scientists and/or incompetent US government officials could resurrect in hopes of weaponizing, only to accidentally unleash it's terror upon an unsuspecting population of sedate, fleshy citizens.
Humans need a predator.
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Coppy
Joined: 28 Oct 2007
Posts: 2569
Location: Chambersburg
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| Posted: Mon Nov 03, 2008 10:30 am Post subject: |
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| Like Dr. Octopus. |
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cookieclaygirl
Joined: 03 Dec 2007
Posts: 2136
Location: shippensburg
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| Posted: Mon Nov 03, 2008 12:08 pm Post subject: |
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no one expects the spanish inquisition!!!!
( da da daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa ) |
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