The Big Study: Townsend turns up in unusual places.

Meet Another (ENIGMA) Code Guy

Joe Desch was more than just another code guy. According to the linked series of articles, he was the man who saved the Allies' bacon after the Germans went to a 4-rotor Enigma machine. The Bombe on which it was broken was his design, created under an NCR contract to the US navy. Read it.

Kudos to you, Professor Sudarshan.

Known for:

Optical coherence and Sudarshan-Glauber representation, V-A theory of the weak force, Tachyons, Quantum Zeno effect, Open quantum system, and contributions to the Spin-statistics theorem

In case you don't know what prompted this post, faster than light particles (Tachyons) were in the news this past week or so.

"The feeling that most people have is this can't be right, this can't be real," said James Gillies, a spokesman for CERN, which hosted the portion of the experiment in Switzerland. Jim Al-Khalili, professor of physics at Surrey University in the U.K. told London's Telegraph that he would "eat [his] boxer shorts on live TV" if the results of the experiment proved correct.

In 1956, Townsend was telling Linda that the Creator has some slow ponies in his stable, but he also keeps  a section for those Faster than light thouroughbreds, too. Tachyons were a pretty new idea then, but I find it interesting that Townsend's 'stable' made room for them, too.

The Hidden Hand: Britain, America, and Cold War Secret Intelligence

As I finished this book by British historian, Richard Aldrich. I found myself nodding along on several of the points he made, specifically in regards to Signals Intelligence. My summation of them:

Cold War Historians are  allowed to study only what our governments chose to release. Take SIGINT. While smaller agencies fought over whatever clandestine operations were left to operate at wars' end, SIGINT became the focus of a top secret Anglo-American treaty signed by Truman.  By 1947, it was clear that this was to become the single most significant and costly of all of the intelligence activities.


And almost all SIGINT stories were withheld from the public archives for many years. Even now, what we get is only a bone intended to keep us busy and distracted from what we are not getting.

You tell it, Brother.

Adamski Never Grows Old.

The UFO Iconoclast has revived the Adamski discussion.  I think most posters in the information rich discussion that follows  would say his photos were faked, but the single most important point is buried many replies down:

Why DID he choose the shapes and designs he used?

There's something else going on in the whole Adamski thing...

What that something is makes for an interesting study, if one can get by the excoriation heaped upon the charlatanry of Mr. Adamski.

And why DID Townsend have Chip's father draw sketches of the photos when the book came out?

NROpen House

The NRO recently threw a gala 50th celebration of these programs, displaying the 'birds' themselves for public viewing (for  one day only):

Saturday's spysat unveiling was attended by a number of jubilant NRO veterans who developed and refined the classified spacecraft and its components for decades in secret, finally able to show their wives and families what they actually did 'at the office' for so many years. Both of the newly declassified satellite systems, GAMBIT and HEXAGON, followed the U.S. military's frontrunner spy satellite system CORONA, which was declassified in 1995. 

SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL Sniper

In SEAL TEAM SIX Harold Wasdin describes the repetitive selection processes that winnow out 99% of the would-be applicants to the best of the best of US Special Forces.  In his case, as in so many others, a harsh  childhood with a father who beat him mercilessly enabled him to develop a grit-your-teeth endurance that  would see him through the  rigorous physical training courses he would complete on his way to the topmost echelon of SEALdom.  The first course, for all  would-be SEALS, is held at the Basic Underwater Demolition School (BUDS) on Coronado Island,

Because Morgan/JD once said that while he and Townsend enjoyed swimming together, Townsend focused on the pleasure of it and he, Morgan, on how to blow something up, I have assumed that it was at BUDS that he developed such an interest. But Harold's story, though I am only halfway through it, has  put another  piece of the Morgan narrative together for me. I now know that when Juan-Carlos refers to Morgan's people as "the Indians,"  he is using the nickname the Red Team component of SEAL TEAM SIX selected for themselves, in homage to the original American exemplars of bravery, stealth, and cunning.(At the time Wasdin went through the program, SEAL Team Six actually included four individual 16 man teams, known by color. It was the  Red Team which always got first draft from the trainee course graduates.)

If Morgan was involved in it (and he would have been in the prime of his career at the time the teams were formed) the naming of this team may also been a tip of the hat to a predecessor group, the special operations axillary unit that Iain Fleming headed in WWII, known (by those cleared to know) as "The Red Indians."  It is common knowledge that Fleming, who  lived next door to  Sir William in Jamaica after the war, drank martinis with him and modeled many of his James Bond stories after him but I suspect there were some other hidden functions in that 'neighborly' relationship.  Whether or not Morgan ever knew about them is another story to be investigated some other time.

On another note, Wasdin also says the CIA's nickname in  Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) circles is "Christians in Action."   I just have one question: If the CIA gets to be the Christians,  who plays the Lions? Any ideas?

They are (NOT) just about kerfluffled out, I think.

The forum poster known as Linda Brown and the forum poster known as Mikado have (for now) reached some sort of not-so-amicable agreement and retired to their respective corners.

To sum up months of public yammering: Linda thought the Resolute Voyages nee Quonset Hut forum was hers (as in set up, paid for, and gifted to her) to make decisions with.  It wasn't. She ranted. He raged over her raving. She was banned. I forget exactly what the final why was, but  it is irrelevant, anyway.

What is important (to me) is that  the new joint offer an inviting place for people of all nations to come in and sit a while, swapping their knowledge and experiences for our stories. The energy that comes from  joining together like this in these virtual spaces drives the engines of eternal creation.

Edited on 09/18/11 to add

resigning myself to the fact that there is never going to be peace between these two, and with best wishes for all involved I have resigned from one forum and locked myself out of the other.

It's a work in progress

It's still in the construction stages, but feel free to drop by The Sword and The Teapot and share a noggin of brew or two.  Now open for business at the http://www.cosmic-token.com/forum

Every Ship Needs a Captain

Tom Beale, who would be something like Josephine's great nephew, has been churning out artwork for the new site. This splendid image with Townsend on deck is hot off his metaphorical press:

Moral Compasses

Linda asks: "Now that Mikado has effectively taken over does that mean that he has the moral responsibility now to keep all of the discussions going.... as was the initial intent?"  

Social behaviors such as adherence to a moral code are group driven: everyone in the group operates according to a moral compass that point to the same star.  But different groups have different teachings and values, so I have to say that although I have no idea what  his initial intent was when he bought the TTownsendBrown domain name and offered it up as as a forum host site. I do know that whatever Mikado does, he will do according to his own moral compass.  Of that I have always been certain.

Watch This Space

Those who wish to continue the recently interrupted forum discussions are invited to join Linda and Rose  in the new place. It should be up and running in a few days, and I will be posting the new address here. In the mean time, feel free to use the comment space below for any messages you wish to pass along to the group at large.