SigAlert
29 09 05 12:25 by tamrI don't know if this applies to anyone outside of California, but it's pretty interesting regardless.
Ben and I hear the term "Sigalert" once in a while on the radio in terms of traffic conditions, and we always wondered what the heck a Sigalert was. Well, my brother called me this morning and told me to go to www.sigalert.com (because he was in some hellacious LA traffic and needed to see some light at the end of the freeway, so to speak), and that got me to do some research. It's actually really interesting:
"SigAlerts originated in 1955 with the Los Angeles Police Department. By the early 1950s, the rapidly growing number of automobilesin Los Angeles had greatly increased the frequency and severity of traffic accidents and jams. Radio stations reported traffic conditions, but the LAPD refused to call radio stations with this information, so each station would call the LAPD, a process that tied up telephone lines and forced officers to repeat the same information again and again.
In 1955, Loyd C. "Sig" Sigmon began developing a solution. Sigmon was Executive Vice President of Golden West Broadcasters (a company owned by singing cowboy Gene Autry). Sigmon had worked for Golden West's station KMPC-AM 710 in 1941, but found himself in the United States Army Signal Corps during World War II, assigned to General Dwight D. Eisenhower's staff, in charge of non-combat radio communications in the European theater. Now, he proposed to apply his knowledge of complex radio networks to the situation in Los Angeles.
Sigmon developed a specialized radio receiver and tape recorder. When the receiver picked up a particular tone, it would switch on the tape deck and record the subsequent bulletin. The device cost about $600. The LAPD's chief, William H. Parker, was interested though skeptical, warning the inventor, "We're going to name this damn thing Sigalert." More practically, he refused to use it unless the receivers were made available to all LA radio stations -- it could not be a KMPC monopoly.
Initially, half a dozen stations installed Sigmon receivers that had "Sigalert" stamped on its side. When a message had been received and recorded from the LAPD, a red light, sometimes accompanied by a buzzer, would alert the radio stations' engineers. Depending on the nature of the problem, the engineer could air the police broadcast immediately, interrupting regular programming if necessary."
The more you know..... :)
SigAlert
12:25 by tamrI don't know if this applies to anyone outside of California, but it's pretty interesting regardless.
Ben and I hear the term "Sigalert" once in a while on the radio in terms of traffic conditions, and we always wondered what the heck a Sigalert was. Well, my brother called me this morning and told me to go to www.sigalert.com (because he was in some hellacious LA traffic and needed to see some light at the end of the freeway, so to speak), and that got me to do some research. It's actually really interesting:
"SigAlerts originated in 1955 with the Los Angeles Police Department. By the early 1950s, the rapidly growing number of automobilesin Los Angeles had greatly increased the frequency and severity of traffic accidents and jams. Radio stations reported traffic conditions, but the LAPD refused to call radio stations with this information, so each station would call the LAPD, a process that tied up telephone lines and forced officers to repeat the same information again and again.
In 1955, Loyd C. "Sig" Sigmon began developing a solution. Sigmon was Executive Vice President of Golden West Broadcasters (a company owned by singing cowboy Gene Autry). Sigmon had worked for Golden West's station KMPC-AM 710 in 1941, but found himself in the United States Army Signal Corps during World War II, assigned to General Dwight D. Eisenhower's staff, in charge of non-combat radio communications in the European theater. Now, he proposed to apply his knowledge of complex radio networks to the situation in Los Angeles.
Sigmon developed a specialized radio receiver and tape recorder. When the receiver picked up a particular tone, it would switch on the tape deck and record the subsequent bulletin. The device cost about $600. The LAPD's chief, William H. Parker, was interested though skeptical, warning the inventor, "We're going to name this damn thing Sigalert." More practically, he refused to use it unless the receivers were made available to all LA radio stations -- it could not be a KMPC monopoly.
Initially, half a dozen stations installed Sigmon receivers that had "Sigalert" stamped on its side. When a message had been received and recorded from the LAPD, a red light, sometimes accompanied by a buzzer, would alert the radio stations' engineers. Depending on the nature of the problem, the engineer could air the police broadcast immediately, interrupting regular programming if necessary."
The more you know..... :)
SigAlert
12:25 by tamrI don't know if this applies to anyone outside of California, but it's pretty interesting regardless.
Ben and I hear the term "Sigalert" once in a while on the radio in terms of traffic conditions, and we always wondered what the heck a Sigalert was. Well, my brother called me this morning and told me to go to www.sigalert.com (because he was in some hellacious LA traffic and needed to see some light at the end of the freeway, so to speak), and that got me to do some research. It's actually really interesting:
"SigAlerts originated in 1955 with the Los Angeles Police Department. By the early 1950s, the rapidly growing number of automobilesin Los Angeles had greatly increased the frequency and severity of traffic accidents and jams. Radio stations reported traffic conditions, but the LAPD refused to call radio stations with this information, so each station would call the LAPD, a process that tied up telephone lines and forced officers to repeat the same information again and again.
In 1955, Loyd C. "Sig" Sigmon began developing a solution. Sigmon was Executive Vice President of Golden West Broadcasters (a company owned by singing cowboy Gene Autry). Sigmon had worked for Golden West's station KMPC-AM 710 in 1941, but found himself in the United States Army Signal Corps during World War II, assigned to General Dwight D. Eisenhower's staff, in charge of non-combat radio communications in the European theater. Now, he proposed to apply his knowledge of complex radio networks to the situation in Los Angeles.
Sigmon developed a specialized radio receiver and tape recorder. When the receiver picked up a particular tone, it would switch on the tape deck and record the subsequent bulletin. The device cost about $600. The LAPD's chief, William H. Parker, was interested though skeptical, warning the inventor, "We're going to name this damn thing Sigalert." More practically, he refused to use it unless the receivers were made available to all LA radio stations -- it could not be a KMPC monopoly.
Initially, half a dozen stations installed Sigmon receivers that had "Sigalert" stamped on its side. When a message had been received and recorded from the LAPD, a red light, sometimes accompanied by a buzzer, would alert the radio stations' engineers. Depending on the nature of the problem, the engineer could air the police broadcast immediately, interrupting regular programming if necessary."
The more you know..... :)
Why
19 09 05 14:05 by tamrI was just curious why the letter y is ambiguously categorized between vowels and consonants, and here's what I found:
"Yes, the letter Y is a vowel or a consonant! In terms of sound, a vowel is 'a speech sound which is produced by comparatively open configuration of the vocal tract, with vibration of the vocal cords but without audible friction...', while a consonant is 'a basic speech sound in which the breath is at least partly obstructed' (definitions from the New Oxford Dictionary of English, 1998). The letter Y can be used to represent different sounds in different words, and can therefore fit either definition. In myth or hymn it is clearly a vowel, and also in words such as my, where it stands for a diphthong (a combination of two vowel sounds). On the other hand, in a word like beyond there is an obstacle to the breath which can be heard between two vowels, and the same sound begins words like young and yes. (This consonant sound, like that of the letter W, is sometimes called a 'semivowel' because it is made in a similar way to a vowel, but functions in contrast to vowels when used in words.) Whether the letter Y is a vowel or a consonant is therefore rather an arbitrary decision. The letter is probably more often used as a vowel, but in this role is often interchangeable with the letter I. However, the consonant sound is not consistently represented in English spelling by any other letter, and perhaps for this reason Y tends traditionally to be counted among the consonants."
The funny thing is, I've heard somewhere (I think it's in a poetry book somewhere in my heap of unorganized books) that other letters also fall under this subsection of grammar, such as the letter f. I think...but I don't remember exactly. And maybe H.
Capybara
16 09 05 18:37 by tamrI'm watching National Geographic right now and they were searching for anacondas, but they ran into a herd of capybaras first. I've seen these before in the zoo, but I think it just hit me that these are 150 guinea pigs.
This page has info about them. They're pretty cool. We had guinea pigs for a few years. The first one, Ophellia, died (should have seen that coming). Replaced her with characters who survived their play: Oberon and Puck. Puck died after 3 years, and he was my favorite (he loved having his head scratched) so I replaced him with Chewbaca (he literally looked like chewbaca). But then he bit my finger and I had to get 2 stitches...so now we have a cage :) (they're fine, I put them up for adoption at PetCo)
Anyway, giant rodents now freak me out. That's a lotta stitches.
Put a line in the coconut...
14 09 05 12:57 by tamrHow Crazy Am I:
12 09 05 17:21 by tamrThanks Mr.Bill for this test! Here are my results:
Your Results:
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LesMis Notes
08 09 05 17:35 by tamrHere are notes for my book club on LesMiserables (mainly so I don't lose them):
Theme:The second generation of romantic poets included John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and George Gordon, LordByron. In Keats's great odes, intellectual and emotional sensibility merge in language of great power and beauty. Shelley, who combined soaring lyricism with an apocalyptic political vision, sought more extreme effects and occasionally achieved them, as in his great drama Prometheus Unbound (1820). His wife, Mary WollstonecraftShelley, wrote the greatest of the Gothic romances, Frankenstein (1818).
Lord Byron was the prototypical romantic hero, the envy and scandal of the age. He has been continually identified with his own characters, particularly the rebellious, irreverent, erotically inclined Don Juan. Byron invested the romantic lyric with a rationalist irony. Minor romantic poets include Robert Southey—best-remembered today for his story “Goldilocks and the Three Bears”—Leigh Hunt, Thomas Moore, and Walter Savage Landor.
The romantic era was also rich in literary criticism and other nonfictional prose. Coleridge proposed an influential theory of literature in his Biographia Literaria (1817). William Godwin and his wife, Mary Wollstonecraft, wrote ground–breaking books on human, and women's, rights. William Hazlitt, who never forsook political radicalism, wrote brilliant and astute literary criticism. The master of the personal essay was Charles Lamb, whereas ThomasDe Quincey was master of the personal confession. The periodicals Edinburgh Review and Blackwood's Magazine,in which leading writers were published throughout the century, were major forums of controversy, political as well as literary.
Although the great novelist Jane Austen wrote during the romantic era, her work defies classification. With insight, grace, and irony she delineated human relationships within the context of English country life. Sir Walter Scott, Scottish nationalist and romantic, made the genre of the historical novel widely popular. Other novelists of the period were Maria Edgeworth, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, and Thomas Love Peacock, the latter noted for his eccentric novels satirizing the romantics."
Wordsworth:
A WHIRL-BLAST from behind the hill
Rushed o'er the wood with startling sound;
Then--all at once the air was still,
And showers of hailstones pattered round.
Where leafless oaks towered high above,
I sat within an undergrove
Of tallest hollies, tall and green;
A fairer bower was never seen.
From year to year the spacious floor
With withered leaves is covered o'er, 10
And all the year the bower is green.
But see! where'er the hailstones drop
The withered leaves all skip and hop;
There's not a breeze--no breath of air--
Yet here, and there, and everywhere
Along the floor, beneath the shade
By those embowering hollies made,
The leaves in myriads jump and spring,
As if with pipes and music rare
Some Robin Good-fellow were there, 20
And all those leaves, in festive glee,
Were dancing to the minstrelsy.Coleridge:It may indeed be phantasy, when I
Essay to draw from all created things
Deep, heartfelt, inward joy that closely clings ;
And trace in leaves and flowers that round me lie
Lessons of love and earnest piety.
So let it be ; and if the wide world rings
In mock of this belief, it brings
Nor fear, nor grief, nor vain perplexity.
So will I build my altar in the fields,
And the blue sky my fretted dome shall be,
And the sweet fragrance that the wild flower yields
Shall be the incense I will yield to Thee,
Thee only God ! and thou shalt not despise
Even me, the priest of this poor sacrifice.
Chimps, Genomes and Automobiles
05 09 05 10:55 by tamrOk, well nothing on automobiles, but I figured I'd have to get a Steve Martin reference in at some point.
It's early in the morning and I'm just enjoying coffee while the ho