Paris plane crash spurs cultural growth in Atlanta – Yahoo! News

ATLANTA (AP) — Fifty years ago, a group of 106 influential cultural and civic leaders from Atlanta traveled to Europe to visit famous museums and demonstrate the ascendant southern city’s commitment to culture.

The Atlanta area’s population in 1962 had recently hit a million people, but political and business leaders worried the growth wouldn’t continue if the city didn’t improve its museums and venues for theater and music. The city’s cultural development would be altered forever by the trip, but in ways that had to do more with its tragic end.

The group was on its way home June 3 when its chartered Air France plane crashed on takeoff at Orly Field in Paris, killing all but two flight attendants. It had been the worst single plane crash to date.

“The community was just in shock,” said Joe Bankoff, outgoing president and CEO of the Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta. “I mean, to lose over 100 people in a moment was just unbelievable. But to lose such a cross section of Atlanta was particularly important.”

On the flight were artists, company leaders, the first woman elected to the city’s school board and other leaders. Among the sites on their packed agenda were the Louvre in Paris, the Coliseum in Rome and London Bridge.

Out of the city’s grief grew a sense that something needed to be done to memorialize them, to improve on its tiny art museum in an old house and struggling art school.

“These people were heads of companies in Atlanta. They were the wives who did a lot of the volunteer work at the art association,” said Susan Lowance, who had traveled with the group but had decided to stay in Europe longer to visit friends.

She believes the development of the arts center is a fitting tribute to her friends.

“These were people who had a stake in what was going to happen, and what happened was wonderful,” Lowance said.

Atlanta is now home to a world-class art museum that has collaborated with the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Louvre, a Grammy-winning symphony orchestra and other top-notch cultural institutions.

via Paris plane crash spurs cultural growth in Atlanta – Yahoo! News.

Strange Random Culture Quote:

Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future. – Albert Camus

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Intelligent Robotic Fish Developed That Can Detect Pollution | Technology | Sky News

Robotic fish that can work together to detect and identify pollution in ports and other aquatic areas have been developed by scientists.

The fish are the work of Shoal, a pan-European ICT project made up of six organisations and partly funded by the European Union.

Luke Speller, project leader and a senior research scientist at the London-based BMT Group, said: “The fish can identify the source of pollution enabling prompt and more effective remedial action.”

The yellow-coloured robotic fish are 1.5 metres five feet long and are driven by a dual-hinged tail that enables them to make tight turns.

They are battery powered and can run for up to eight hours before they need to be recharged.

Each one has a range of sensors and programming that allows it to navigate and gather information which it can share with other fish and relay back to researchers.

Mr Speller said: “Chemical sensors fitted to the fish permit real-time in-situ analysis, rather than the current method of sample collection and dispatch to a shore based laboratory.

“Furthermore, the Artificial Intelligence which has been introduced means that the fish can identify the source of pollution enabling prompt and more effective remedial action.”

via Intelligent Robotic Fish Developed That Can Detect Pollution | Technology | Sky News.

Strange Random Robot Quote:

“I wish a robot would get elected president. That way, when he came to town, we could all take a shot at him and not feel too bad.” – Jack Handy

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Leisure Inequality – Business Insider

Income inequality is still rising in the U.S., as wealthy people continue to make and spend more. But they also work harder, according to a recent study by Orazio Attanasio, Erik Hurst and Luigi Pistaferri.

The study found that lower-educated people had much more leisure time than their higher-educated counterparts. Leisure time is a factor that plays heavily into a person’s health and well-being.

To find out how much leisure time the different demographics had, researchers compared data from the 1985 Americans’ Use of Time survey and the 2003-07 American Time Use survey. Highly-educated people are defined with those who have more than 12 years of education.

Here’s what they found:

First, in 1985, low educated men took only slightly more hours per week of leisure than high educated men. However, by 2007, the leisure differences between high and low educated men are substantial. Specifically, low educated men experienced a 2.5 hours per week gain in leisure between 1985 and 2007. High educated men, during the same time period, experienced a 1.2 hour per week decline in leisure. The new effect is that leisure inequality increased dramatically after 1985. Again, similar patterns are found for women.

via Leisure Inequality – Business Insider.

Strange Random Recreation Quote:

“Leave all the afternoon for exercise and recreation, which are as necessary as reading. I will rather say more necessary because health is worth more than learning.” – Thomas Jefferson

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msnbc.com Entertainment – Can World War II film long hidden by the Army aid today’s veterans?

“The guns are quiet now,” is the first line in John Huston‘s 1946 short film, “Let There Be Light,” which focuses on World War II veterans dealing with what we’d today call post-traumatic stress disorder.

Quiet, perhaps. But the echoes of those guns were still ringing in the minds of many returning soldiers — much as they still are with modern veterans.

Huston, himself a veteran and director of such films as “The Maltese Falcon” and “Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” filmed soldiers being treated at Long Island’s Mason General Hospital for what at the time was called shellshock.

msnbc.com Entertainment – Can World War II film…, posted with vodpod

Film available online for streaming and download (for a limited time) at the National Film Preservation Foundation

Strange Random War Quote:

War does not determine who is right – only who is left. – Bertrand Russell

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London’s Tea and Circuses | Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee – WSJ.com

Jubilee is one of the world’s oldest celebrations. Of course, in Leviticus it involved the reversion of all property to its divine Original Owner, which probably isn’t a custom Britons will wish to observe on the 60th anniversary of the reign of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. In place of ancient Hebrew land reform, there will be something more like Roman bread and circuses.

First, bread. If it doesn’t rain on Sunday, June 3—not a bet I’d like to take—neighborhoods across Britain will lay out long trestle tables with food and drink for the Big Lunch.

You can find your local feast at thebiglunch.com, though possibly not the menu. But I can tell you what the 10,000 guests at the royal concert at Buckingham Palace will be eating and drinking at their picnic the next day: Jubilee chicken, created by Heston Blumenthal and royal chef Mark Flanagan it will undoubtedly take its place in the foodie canon alongside Constance Spry and Rosemary Hume’s 60-year-old recipe for Coronation chicken, sauced with curry flavored mayonnaise, and Sandringham strawberry crumble crunch, with upscale supermarket chain Waitrose supplying the rest of the nosh. To drink: specially labeled fizz by royal-warrant-holding Moët & Chandon.

Now to the circuses. In a side ring on the Saturday, you have the elder Windsors attending the Epsom Derby. On the Sunday, you have the pageant, when the queen in her royal barge leads a thousand-boat flotilla to a point downriver of Tower Bridge. To quote the official site: “There will be an exuberance of historic boats, wooden launches, steam vessels and other boats of note.” And the London Philharmonic Orchestra will play appropriate music near Waterloo Bridge—if anyone can hear it.

In the main ring, though, is the concert given by some aged knights of British pop, like Elton John and Tom Jones, plus the odd-woman-out, American soprano Renée Fleming. At 10:30 p.m., the queen will light the “National Beacon” by dropping a diamond in a pot that ignites the flame of the torch in the Mall. This will be broadcast live on radio and TV—probably the wisest place to watch it, as London traffic is bound to be at a standstill.

via London’s Tea and Circuses | Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee – WSJ.com.

Strange Random Royalty Quote:

“Royalty is a government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions.” – Walter Bagehot (British political Analyst, Economist and Editor, one of the most influential journalists of the mid-Victorian period, 1826-1877)

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