Undisclosed until well after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and at a time of severely deteriorated relations seeded with deep distrust and suspicion that a first-strike on the part of the United States was eminent, on this day in 1983 duty officer Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov (*1939 - †2017) correctly assessed that reports from the early warning satellite network were a false alarm and thus averted an accidental counter-attack.
Despite heightened tensions and hair-trigger attitudes, Petrov appreciated the gravity of his decision and questioned the reliability of the new system and judged that the five missile signatures detected not to be of the calibre of an offensive, which likely would have been comprised of hundreds of warheads launched simultaneously, in accordance with the policy of mutually assured destruction. Subsequent investigations showed that the system was detecting glints of sunlight reflected on high-altitude clouds.
Wednesday 26 September 2018
how about a nice game of chess?
Tuesday 25 September 2018
panda, cyborg, jesus
catagories: ๐ถ, ๐ด๓ ง๓ ข๓ ท๓ ฌ๓ ณ๓ ฟ, ๐ฌ, Star Wars
rubric
Like when learning there was an algorithm, a certain method to solve for Sudoku, I lost interest in it without really having given a try—dismissing it as an unworthy challenge, I think I was guilty of adopting the same attitude towards Ernล Rubik’s ingeniously engineered, elegant puzzle and could appreciate the correspondent’s initial outlook attending an educational outreach workshop ran under the auspices of the toy.
The brute numbers gave me my dรฉnouement: there are forty three quintillion possible positions, which at a rate of trying each every second (as a computer would do) would take over a trillion years to arrive at the single solution out of those seemingly infinite possibilities. Unsure whether it could even be solved, Rubik played with his prototype for a whole month before arriving at a solution. Some of us are virtuosi while many of us just plod along but with persistence and a willingness to step outside of one’s self we can all be the cube.
catagories: ๐, ๐ญ, ๐งฎ, sport and games
i am elmer j. fudd, millionaire, i own a mansion and a yacht
During what could be characterised as the height of the Red Scare in post-war America, fearful over the brittle state of the capitalist model—executives with General Motors commissioned a trio of propaganda cartoons from the creative cast behind Looney Tunes, which marked quite a departure from the usual antics and took a decidedly classroom tone to inculcate impressionable minds.
It’s hard to say how seriously they took their assignment and perhaps only did so as to not draw undue attention to their studios. “By Word of Mouse” (1954) told the tale of a German country mouse, Hans, visiting an American city mouse cousin who lived in a fashionable department store called “Stacy’s” and mostly features Hans being dazzled by the abundance and selection of inventory available to the common worker, with a professor mouse explaining that free market competition of “Rival Department Store” drives prices down to the benefit of both producers and consumers. “Heir Conditioning” (1955) features Elmer Fudd acting as a financial advisor to Sylvester the Cat after inheriting a large sum of money, encouraging him to invest it rather than sharing it with his fellow alley cats. Learn more and watch all the cartoons on Dangerous Minds at the link above.