A Central Indiana family will get to come home Tuesday, thanks to the generosity of strangers.
The Ross family became stuck in Florida after their teenage daughter, Madison, was hospitalized with pneumonia.
Madison, was born with spina bifida and has had cerebral palsy since she was four months old.
Her sickness meant an air ambulance was the only way for her to get home. Plainfield-based Grace on Wings offered to cover all flying expenses except for fuel.
After our story first aired and your generous donations came in, a$10,000 goal was met.
?Going down.? That?s the last thing Don Draper hears in his office from the man Duck has brought in to replace him. The next scene shows Peggy sitting in Don?s office, looking out his window. This did not occur to me the first time I watched, but many of our more astute (or maybe morose) readers worried this was the moment Don?s body would come sailing past the office window, just as it does in the opening graphic. But then Slate?s own Fred Kaplan pointed out to me that the graphic actually ends with Don back in his chair, working, living. I think we all three agree in this TV Club that in the next and supposedly final season of Mad Men Don will probably be on his way up, even if he is no longer at the firm. Perhaps he will make it to A.A., or be closer to Sally, or live the groovy ?bicoastal? lifestyle he offers to Megan. Surely he will be on his way to becoming the '80s Don Draper we have all come to anticipate.
And what of Peggy? The symbolism in this finale was heavily pointing to Peggy joining whatever the era equivalent was of the Forbes list of most powerful women: her first-time-ever pants in the office (and what pants they were! red plaid! with a matching top!); her sitting in Don?s chair, very comfortably, rifling through his things; Ted?s injunction to her to stay behind in New York and build her career. Early on in this season Peggy had been heavily leaning in, bossing her underlings, giving Joan good advice. But then the office merger threw her off a bit, and she got sidelined again. In the next season, I am betting that Peggy morphs into Don: ruthless, untouchable, and harboring secrets.
One thing that struck me in this finale is how often we see the adults through the eyes of the children. Sally is the most cutting in this regard, as she tells her father on the phone, ?Well, I wouldn?t want to do anything immoral,? and then follows that up with, ?Why don?t you just tell them what I saw?? And then there?s baby Kevin, trying to work his magic on Roger, giving him a Thanksgiving table that, unlike the one his daughter threatens, isn?t empty. Those children?Kevin, Bobby, Eugene, Sally, all of Sally?s outrageous girlfriends?those are the Mad Men viewers. Matt Weiner, who is 47, is contemporary with the Draper boys. ?She?s from a broken home,? Betty tells Don about Sally. But it?s broader than that. A show that seemed to be about what our parents were like is shifting into one about how they made us who we are. That?s what was so beautiful about the look that passed between Sally and Don in the last scene, an understanding between generations.
This was a strange season in that it seemed to throw up intriguing plot possibilities and then grow quickly bored with them?and then it always circled back to the disintegration of Don. I?m not sure viewers always appreciated being in such close quarters with a morose crumbling alcoholic?certainly not as much as our own Troy Patterson did. But at least we got our redemption in the end.
Gentleman, it?s been a pleasure clubbing with you this season. Seth, as you suggested: ?Let's all move to Los Angeles. We can be happy together there. Just three desks, a window, and the ocean.?
It?s all fun and games until someone shoots you in the face?
Alchemy, at 2,000 degrees Celsius. A new study from the Argonne National Laboratory reports that a group of scientists from Japan, Finland, America, and Germany have used lasers to turn liquid cement into a glassy, liquid metal.
The newly-invented process could be beneficial for building circuits that resist corosion. Their discovery could eventually change the way all sorts of devices are made, ranging from iPads to TVs.
The study, which appeared in The Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences and was accompanied by some inspiring photoshop art (see below), describes the process of heating a cement compound to 2,000 degrees Celsius. Using aerodynamic levitation, which lifts materials off of a surface using gas pressure, the team was able to carefully control the way the cement cooled. The result of the superheating? A glassy surface that can ?trap? free electrons?the things needed to conduct electricity.
Their discovery has the potential to change how gadgets are made. "This new material has lots of applications including as thin-film resistors used in liquid-crystal displays, basically the flat panel computer monitor that you are probably reading this from at the moment," said a physicist named Chris Benmore in Argonne?s release. And eventually, the same levitation-and-laser process could turn other materials into semi-conductors. "Now that we know the conditions needed to create trapped electrons in materials we can develop and test other materials to find out if we can make them conduct electricity in this way,? Benmore added.
Turning cement into metal might sound like a more sustainable manufacturing technique?but, as Architect Magazine writer Blaine Brownell points out, the process used to heat the cement compound is remarkably energy-intensive. So, for now, it?s unclear whether such a discovery could end up being better for the environment. [Argonne National Laboratory]
June 12, 2013 ? Loggerhead turtles use visual cues to find gelatinous prey to snack on as they swim in open waters, according to research published June 12 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Tomoko Narazaki and colleagues from the University of Tokyo, Japan.
Tracking underwater movements with 3D loggers and National Geographic Crittercams, the researchers found the turtles relied on sight, rather than sound or smell, to identify and move toward gelatinous, floating prey like jellyfish and other organisms; one turtle even swam toward a floating plastic bag. Turtles in this study foraged for such foods approximately twice every hour, suggesting they may rely on such gelatinous prey for energy more than previously thought.
Previous studies have shown that turtle diets vary with their age, habitat and other factors, but adult turtles depend on deep-sea hard-shelled animals like mollusks for food. The gelatinous prey studied here are low-energy, easily digestible foods that are unlikely to replace these other prey. However, the authors suggest that opportunistic foraging on such prey may benefit loggerhead turtles during oceanic migrations, when prey at the bottom of the sea is harder to reach.
The study also offers insights into the foraging habits of these turtles, listed an endangered species by by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The authors add that the methods used here could be developed to map areas with higher foraging opportunities along oceanic migratory routes for loggerhead turtles.
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Journal Reference:
Tomoko Narazaki, Katsufumi Sato, Kyler J. Abernathy, Greg J. Marshall, Nobuyuki Miyazaki. Loggerhead Turtles (Caretta caretta) Use Vision to Forage on Gelatinous Prey in Mid-Water. PLoS ONE, 2013; 8 (6): e66043 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0066043
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Today companies like Microsoft and Sony aren't just trying to sell you the video game console of the future, they're trying to sell you the living room of the future, a central hub that connects you to your family and your family to the world. But our expectations for what tech should be included in the living room of tomorrow have evolved dramatically over the past century.
From newspapers delivered by radio in the 1930s to the internet-connected TVs of the 1990s, today we have a brief history of the living room of the future.
Home Movies, TV, and Newspaper by Radio
At the 1939 New York World's Fair, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) showed off its "Living Room of Tomorrow." Television was still very much an experimental technology, but it was an enormous hit at the Fair, where Depression-weary visitors couldn't get enough tech-utopianism. RCA's display put TV front and center in their living room of tomorrow?even if the screen was absolutely tiny.
It wasn't just TV that RCA was promising. This sleek, streamlined, ultra-modern living room of tomorrow had a movie projector, radio, record player, sound recorder, and even a fax machine that would deliver your daily newspaper by radio. RCA was experimenting with these bizarre faxpaper machines in the 1930s, gaining license from the FCC to utilize radio spectrum that went unused between midnight and 6am.
The August 1939 issue of Popular Mechanicshighlighted RCA's living room set-up at the Fair:
Simple in arrangement, and soft in color because of television, the suggested ?radio living room of tomorrow? at the New York World?s Fair is open to visitors, who are permitted to inspect the various sight, sound and facsimile facilities while they are in operation.
Television and proto-faxes are one thing, but it wasn't until after World War II that the living room would truly become the high-tech nerve center of the American middle class home. The postwar economic recovery and rise of leisure time meant that people looking into the future saw living rooms with increasingly sleeker TVs, video on demand, and a generally more diverse mix of media.
It's no surprise that TV has long had a central spot in the living room of the future. By 1956 about 75 percent of American homes had a television. And it was fast becoming a great American family-friendly past-time.
Home Media Library
The February 1, 1959 edition of the Sunday comic strip Closer Than We Think by commercial illustrator Arthur Radebaugh imagined the "Electronic Home Library" of the near future.
From the Chicago Tribune:
Some unusual inventions for home entertainment and education will be yours in the future, such as the "television recorder" that RCA's David Sarnoff described recently.
With this device, when a worthwhile program comes over the air while you are away from home, or even while you're watching it, you'll be able to preserve both the picture and sound on tape for replaying at any time. Westinghouse's Gwilym Price expects such tapes to reproduce shows in three dimensions and color on screens as shallow as a picture.
Another pushbutton development will be projection of microfilm books on the ceiling or wall in large type. To increase their impact on students, an electronic voice may accompany the visual passages.
While I imagine that you might get a sore neck from staring at the ceiling all day, that electronic voice accompaniment would certainly alleviate the problem. This was also one of the earliest conceptions of the DVR as we know it today; if only Radebaugh had foreseen the advent of those annoying Hopper commercials, we might have headed them off at the pass.
Flatscreen and Worldwide
What happens when beaming entertainment and news all around the world becomes a reality? The 1966 book Magna Carta of Space explored what international agreements may need to be hammered out now that countries were putting humans, satellites (and potentially weapons) into space.
Their living room of the future included a flat-screen TV almost as large as yours today, but what are people watching on it? The shot of the Eiffel Tower was perhaps a wink at mid-'60s readers that the French?and their comparatively loose attitudes toward sexual imagery?might infect the American living room of tomorrow. Little did they know that the US would forgo sex for ultraviolence as its primary illicit indulgence.
The Ultimate Remote
In 1967, Walter Cronkite gave Americans a look at what was billed as the futuristic home of the year 2001. His CBS show "The 21st Century" showed Americans in the 1960s what the kitchen, office and, of course, living room of the future might look like. Designed by Philco-Ford, the house was also featured in a company-produced short film called "1999 A.D."
The living room of the future included a giant control panel from which to adjust everything from the TV to the glowing, color-changing walls.
A lot of this new free time will be spent at home. And this console controls a full array of equipment to inform, instruct and entertain the family of the future. The possibilities for the evening?s program are called up on this screen. We could watch a football game, or a movie shown in full color on our big 3D television screen. The sound would come from these globe-like speakers. Or with the push of a button we could momentarily escape from our 21st century lives and fill the room with stereophonic music from another age.
It's never said explicitly in the episode, but those light-up walls weren't just for giggles. Glowing walls actually had some utility during the Cold War, providing illumination in those windowless, concrete-reinforced rooms built as fallout shelters. The atomic concept houses of the late 1940s and '50s would often show backlit aquariums, well-lit dioramas, and colorful walls in a conscious effort to distract from the fact that they were windowless rooms.
The June 1967 issue of Radio-Electronics magazine gave readers their own take on that Philco-Ford house of the future.
Their version of the house added a holographic dimension to the TV. From the magazine:
The living room, with its wallsized television screen, is the focal point of this house.
The TV screen is three-dimensional or holographic, enabling you to look around corners almost as though you were inside the scene being projected. We expect that electroluminescence is going to be the medium for displays of this type.
Death of Film, Rise of Robots
The flatscreen high-def TV continued to be the centerpiece of the living room of the future in the 1970s. But as you can see in the illustration above from the 1979 children's book Future Cities by Kenneth Gatland and David Jefferis, the personal robot makes lounging in your living room that much easier.
The book lays out all of the improvements that are just around the corner for kids of the 1970s:
1. Giant-size TV. Based on the designs already available, this one has a super-bright screen for daylight viewing and stereo sound system.
2. Electronic video movie camera, requires no film, just a spool of tape. Within ten years video cameras like this could be replaced by 3-D holographic recorders.
3. Flat screen TV. No longer a bulky box, TV has shrunk to a thickness of less than five centimetres. This one is used to order shopping via a computerised shopping centre a few kilometres away. The system takes orders and indicates if any items are not in stock.
4. Video disc player used for recording off the TV and for replaying favourite films.
5. Domestic robot rolls in with drinks. One robot, the Quasar, is already on sale in the USA. Reports indicate that it may be little more than a toy however, so it will be a few years before 'Star Wars' robots tramp through our homes.
6. Mail slot. By 1990, most mail will be sent in electronic form. Posting a letter will consist of placing it in front of a copier in your home or at the post office. The electronic read-out will be flashed up to a satellite, to be beamed to its destination. Like many other electronic ideas, the savings in time and energy could be enormous.
Big TVs? Email? Blu-ray? Video cameras? Check, check, check, check. How is it that robot butler is the only one we're still missing out on?
Interactive Holographic Classics
By the 1980s the living room of the future was quite the interactive experience. Not only could you watch holographic movies, you could become a part of the action.
The 1981 kids' book Tomorrow's Home by Neil Ardley promised kids just that with a two-page spread that showed how people of the future might entertain themselves by stepping into their media:
All this could come about with developments in holographic video ? a system that uses laser beams to produce images that have depth just as in real life. Once perfected, it will produce a show that takes place not on a screen but in real space ? even around you. You could walk in and out of the action, and view it from any direction ? the ultimate in realism. In this case, the computer that operates the system has been instructed to omit the role of Julius Caesar so as to allow you to take part. Although the images look so real, you could walk through them, so you suffer no harm from your killers' knives.
The Sensorium
For some people, however, holographic media wasn't enough. Plugging the human body directly into the living room would prove to be the wave of the future.
The February 1982 issue of The Futurist magazine ran illustrations by Roy Mason which imagined the house of tomorrow. The "sensorium" was supposedly going to replace the family room at some far off date in the future.
The magazine explained that the circular design wasn't just for taking advantage of viewing the hologram, it also facilitated conversation. You also had the option to hook yourself up to the living room's biofeedback sensors, allowing the whole place to become one big creepy mood ring.
Home entertainment center or "sensorium" features a free-standing "holostage" that generated three-dimensional TV images from broadcast, cable, or recordings. The walls are large-screen video displays that can change color in time to music, or, linked through biofeedback sensors, respond to people's moods. Comfortable circular couch also encourages a more traditional form of entertainment ? conversation.
The sensorium isn't quite eXistenZ-level of plugging in, but I suppose that's a good thing.
Microsoft's Web TV
In 1995 Microsoft produced a series of "life in the future" videos that were included on a CD-ROM with the book The Road Ahead by Bill Gates.
Their living room of the year 2004 looks pretty ordinary, but the TV of the future is revolutionary because it can talk to the internet, much like the ubiquitous "smart" TVs of today do. The whole experience actually feels a bit like a Choose Your Own Adventure in the creepy way that the media personalities lay out your choices for entertainment.
The living room of the future has always been about connections; making them deeper, stronger, and more expansive. And while you can see everyone from Microsoft to Sony to Apple carrying that torch today, it's still not clear that access to more stuff has brought us closer together. If anything, in the living room of the future, we're further apart than ever.
NEW YORK (AP) ? AT&T Inc. on Monday said it's adding a walkie-talkie-like application to the iPhone for its corporate customers, replicating a hallmark feature of the Nextel network, which is being shut down this summer.
A push-to-talk feature is available on some non-Nextel phones from Sprint, Verizon and AT&T, but this is the first time it's available on the iPhone in the U.S.
With push-to-talk systems, the user pushes a button to broadcast a voice message to a group ? in the case of the AT&T app, of up to 250 people. This type of service has been popular for work sites and first responders.
Sprint is shutting down the Nextel network this summer because it doesn't support high-speed data traffic. It's trying to get as many Nextel users as possible to switch to Sprint phones with push-to-talk capability, but it's competing with Verizon Wireless and AT&T.
Dallas-based AT&T said the push-to-talk function won't work just by downloading the app ? the company has to work with its corporate customers to integrate it.
AT&T shares rose 40 cents to $35.85 in morning trading. Its shares have traded in a 52-week range of $32.71 to $39.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the United States suffered through a skyjacking epidemic that has now been largely forgotten. In his new book, The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking, Brendan I. Koerner tells the story of the chaotic age when jets were routinely commandeered by the desperate and disillusioned. In the run-up to his book?s publication on June 18, Koerner has been writing a daily series of skyjacker profiles. Slate is running the final dozen of these ?Skyjacker of the Day? entries.
Name: Leon and Cody Bearden
Flight Info: Continental Airlines Flight 54 from Los Angeles to Houston, with scheduled stops in Phoenix, El Paso, and San Antonio
The Story: The first outbreak of America?s 11-year skyjacking epidemic occurred in the summer of 1961, when four planes were seized in the nation?s airspace. The last of these incidents, involving 16-year-old Cody Bearden and his father, Leon, is the one that finally forced the federal government to pay attention to the escalating crisis.
The elder Bearden was a convicted bank robber and father of four who, due to a host of financial and psychological problems, had decided that the United States was rotten to the core. He roped Cody, his guitar-playing eldest son, into a plot that would allow them to start fresh in Cuba: Their plan was to give Fidel Castro a $5.4 million Boeing 707 as a gift and thereby earn political asylum.
The Beardens boarded the red-eye flight in Phoenix with two loaded handguns tucked into their carry-on bags. (At that time, there was absolutely no baggage screening at American airports.) En route to El Paso, Leon and Cody forced a stewardess to issue a call for volunteer hostages over the jet?s public address system. Four men came forward to meet the hijackers in the plane?s first-class lounge, including a lanky Border Patrol agent named Leonard Gilman.
Leon Bearden told the volunteers that he had ordered the pilot to keep flying to El Paso. After the plane refueled, he and Cody would release all the passengers, save for the four volunteer hostages. The plane would then veer southeast to Havana.
As the Boeing 707 began its descent, Gilman gently asked Leon Bearden if he wished to go to Cuba for political reasons. ?I?m just fed up,? Leon replied. ?I don?t want to be an American anymore.?
By the time Flight 54 touched down in El Paso at 2 a.m., President John F. Kennedy had been briefed on the situation. Loath to hand his Cuban nemesis another public relations victory so soon after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the president authorized the FBI to do everything in its power to prevent the hijacked plane from leaving Texas.
At the FBI?s behest, Continental?s ground crew stalled for time after the passengers were released, pretending that the jet required hours of maintenance. As the sun began to rise that morning, Leon Bearden became highly agitated by the endless delays. He commanded Flight 54?s captain to take off at once, punctuating his directive by firing a bullet between the co-pilot?s feet.
But the trip to Havana lasted less than 50 yards. As the Boeing 707 pivoted toward the runway, a dozen federal agents opened fire with submachine guns, shredding the jet?s landing gear and destroying one of its engines. The stranded Beardens were left with no choice but to let an FBI negotiator come aboard the aircraft. But Leon had become too unhinged to strike any sort of deal. ?I would rather be killed myself than go to prison,? he told the negotiator. ?I?d rather kill myself.?
An instant after making this suicidal threat, Leon glanced back to see the flight attendants sneaking out the plane?s rear exit. Before he could do anything drastic, Gilman punched him in the ear with all his might, shattering a bone in his right hand in the process. As the hijacker crumpled to the floor, the FBI negotiator spun and tackled Cody, who had let down his guard while listening to his father?s rant.
The Upshot: A day after the Beardens were subdued, the Senate held an emergency hearing to address the nation?s rash of hijackings. As part of that hearing, a senator asked Najeeb Halaby, the head of the Federal Aviation Administration, whether anyone had considered the possibility of searching all passengers prior to boarding. Halaby scoffed at the idea: ?Can you imagine the line that would form from the ticket counter in Miami if everyone had to submit to police inspections?? The senators ended up voting to make air piracy an offense punishable by death, but they took no action on security screening. Leon Bearden was later sentenced to life in prison, while Cody accepted a plea bargain that allowed him to be released from custody by his 21st birthday.
