December 28, 2014 archive
Dec 28 2014
Cartnoon
Dec 28 2014
On This Day In History December 28
This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.
Find the past “On This Day in History” here.
December 28 is the 362nd day of the year (363rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are three days remaining until the end of the year.
On this day in 1895, the first commercial movie is screened in Paris.
On this day in 1895, the world’s first commercial movie screening takes place at the Grand Cafe in Paris. The film was made by Louis and Auguste Lumiere, two French brothers who developed a camera-projector called the Cinematographe. The Lumiere brothers unveiled their invention to the public in March 1895 with a brief film showing workers leaving the Lumiere factory. On December 28, the entrepreneurial siblings screened a series of short scenes from everyday French life and charged admission for the first time.
Movie technology has its roots in the early 1830s, when Joseph Plateau of Belgium and Simon Stampfer of Austria simultaneously developed a device called the phenakistoscope, which incorporated a spinning disc with slots through which a series of drawings could be viewed, creating the effect of a single moving image. The phenakistoscope, considered the precursor of modern motion pictures, was followed by decades of advances and in 1890, Thomas Edison and his assistant William Dickson developed the first motion-picture camera, called the Kinetograph. The next year, 1891, Edison invented the Kinetoscope, a machine with a peephole viewer that allowed one person to watch a strip of film as it moved past a light.
In 1894, Antoine Lumiere, the father of Auguste (1862-1954) and Louis (1864-1948), saw a demonstration of Edison’s Kinetoscope. The elder Lumiere was impressed, but reportedly told his sons, who ran a successful photographic plate factory in Lyon, France, that they could come up with something better. Louis Lumiere’s Cinematographe, which was patented in 1895, was a combination movie camera and projector that could display moving images on a screen for an audience. The Cinematographe was also smaller, lighter and used less film than Edison’s technology
The Lumière brothers, Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas (19 October 1862, Besancon, France – 10 April 1954, Lyon) and Louis Jean (5 October 1864, Besancon, France – 6 June 1948, Bandol), were among the earliest filmmakers in history. (Appropriately, “lumière” translates as “light” in English.)
(In) 1862 and 1864, and moved to Lyon in 1870, where both attended La Martiniere, the largest technical school in Lyon. Their father, Claude-Antoine Lumière (1840-1911), ran a photographic firm and both brothers worked for him: Louis as a physicist and Auguste as a manager. Louis had made some improvements to the still-photograph process, the most notable being the dry-plate process, which was a major step towards moving images.
It was not until their father retired in 1892 that the brothers began to create moving pictures. They patented a number of significant processes leading up to their film camera – most notably film perforations (originally implemented by Emile Reynaud) as a means of advancing the film through the camera and projector. The cinèmatographe itself was patented on 13 February 1895 and the first footage ever to be recorded using it was recorded on March 19, 1895.
Their first public screening of films at which admission was charged was held on December 28, 1895, at Salon Indien du Grand Cafè in Paris. This history-making presentation featured ten short films, including their first film, Sortie des Usines Lumière a Lyon (Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory). Each film is 17 meters long, which, when hand cranked through a projector, runs approximately 50 seconds.
Dec 28 2014
Six In The Morning
NATO to hold ceremony closing Afghan mission
Event arranged in secret due to threat of Taliban strikes in Afghan capital, which has been hit by repeated bombings.
Last updated: 28 Dec 2014 07:10
NATO will hold a ceremony in Kabul formally ending its war in Afghanistan, officials said, after 13 years of conflict and gradual troop withdrawals that have left the country in the grip of worsening conflicts with armed groups.The event was arranged in secret due to the threat of Taliban strikes in the Afghan capital, which has been hit by repeated suicide bombings and gun attacks over recent years.
On January 1, the US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) combat mission will be replaced by a NATO “training and support” mission.
The closing of NATO’s combat mission comes at the end of the country’s deadliest year during the war, which saw at least 4,600 Afghan soldiers and police killed and many other civilian deaths.
Dec 28 2014
TBC (What Did You Learn in School Today?)
Breakfast Tune: What Did You Learn in School Today? – Pete Seeger, Tom Paxton
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
I learned that Washington never told a lie.
I learned that soldiers seldom die.
I learned that everybody’s free.
And that’s what the teacher said to me.
That’s what I learned in school today.
That’s what I learned in school.What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
I learned that policemen are my friends.
I learned that justice never ends.
I learned that murderers die for their crimes.
Even if we make a mistake sometimes.
That’s what I learned in school today.
That’s what I learned in school.What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
I learned our government must be strong.
It’s always right and never wrong.
Our leaders are the finest men.
And we elect them again and again.
That’s what I learned in school today.
That’s what I learned in school.What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
I learned that war is not so bad.
I learned of the great ones we have had.
We fought in Germany and in France.
And some day I might get my chance.
That’s what I learned in school today.
That’s what I learned in school.
Today in History
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
Breakfast News & Blogs Below
Dec 28 2014
Stephen Colbert – The First and Last Word – Truthiness
Adapted from Rant of the Week from The Stars Hollow Gazette
Stephen Colbert hosted his last “The Colbert Report” on December 18. His first “The Word” was “Truthiness” which in 2006 became Merriam Webster’s “Word of the Year.”
As expected, there were a few surprises in store for us as we pored through your submissions for our first Word of the Year online survey. Either the vast majority of you out there in the Merriam-Webster online community are big fans of The Colbert Report, or Time Magazine was right on target when it honored the show’s host Stephen Colbert earlier this year as one of the most influential people of 2006. By an overwhelming 5 to 1 majority vote, our visitors have awarded top honors to a word Colbert first introduced on “The Word” segment of his debut broadcast on Comedy Central back in October 2005. Soon after, this word was chosen as the 16th annual Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society, and defined by them as “the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true.”
Beauty Is Truthiness, Truthiness Beauty …
… that is all ye know on earth, and if ye need to know anything else, Stephen Colbert, 42, will tell ye what to think. On Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report (silent t, both words), he plays a vain, blustery political pundit, and neither politics nor punditry emerges unscathed. In the first episode, he coined the term truthiness to embody his belief that facts are far less important than what you want to be true. “You don’t look up truthiness in a book,” he declared. “You look it up in your gut.”Truthiness resonated beyond Colbert’s satire in an era of phony memoirs and reality TV. And to people who feel the Administration chooses gut (and spin) over facts, his acerbic speech “praising” the President at the White House correspondents’ dinner became pop legend. Citing Bush’s cratering job-approval rating, the in-character Colbert argued, “Does that not also logically mean that 68% of Americans approve of the job he’s not doing?” Whatever you’re doing, or not doing, Mr. Colbert, keep it up.
So to honor Stephen’s departure from Comedy Central and the end of “The Colbert Report”, our “Rant of the Week” presents his first and last words.
Dec 28 2014
Regulations for Pissing on Cheney’s Grave Announced
(Satire Alert)
DC – The National Park Service announced today that, responding to popular demand, it is preparing rules and regulations for pissing on the grave of Dick Cheney.
“It’s important to remember,” said a spokesman, “That Cheney does not have an actual grave at this time since he is not dead. However, public interest in pissing on his grave makes it increasingly urgent to have plans in place.”
“Ordinarily, we do not encourage urinating in public places. However, Cheney is so universally hated that we see no practical way of keeping it from happening, and have decided instead to regulate it like any other recreational activity.”
Once the final resting place of Dick Cheney is determined, NPS will conduct hydro geological studies to determine the likely drainage. “This is an important health measure,” said the spokesman, “Remember, the grave will house the rotting remains of Dick Cheney, a heavy load on the well being of whatever community it curses. We may have to install a large septic field as it is. Charging a small fee for pissing on Cheney’s grave may be the only way to recoup those costs.”
Sceptics claim that NPS is simply seizing an opportunity to profit from the burgeoning piss-on-Cheney’s-grave industry. “The first day my web store was up,” said one young entrepreneur, “I sold over 1,000 bumper stickers saying ‘Piss on Cheney’s grave? Hell yeah!” Now the government wants in on this? As Dick says, “F*** You!”
Others cautioned NPS against excessive regulation. “We’re talking about an expressive activity,” said a First Amendment expert. “Our forefathers, were they alive today, would be lining up to piss on Cheney’s grave.”
Current plans call for limiting pissers to a few hundred a day, charging a small fee for maintenance and upkeep. Children under 12 will be free, but dogs and other urinating animals will count as an adult. “Will someone bring in the elephant to piss on his grave?” Chuckled an NPS employee. “I hope so. Ever see one of those cut loose? We may have to close the place for the rest of the day!”