e-telescope online magazine

 
  • Increase font size
  • Default font size
  • Decrease font size
Greek

Greece: Same Tragedy, Different Scripts

Cafés are full in Athens, and droves of tourists still visit the Parthenon and go island-hopping in the fabled Aegean. But beneath the summery surface, there is confusion, anger, and despair as this...

The CIA's Worst-Kept Secret: Newly Declassified Files Confirm United States Collaboration with Nazis

"Honest and idealist ... enjoys good food and wine ... unprejudiced mind ..." ...

Japan's Gift to FDR

It was about 9:30 on the evening of December 6, 1941. Navy Lieutenant Lester R. Schulz, special deputy communication watch officer, assigned that evening to the White House "to receive [a] special...

Stealth Superpower

The future is no longer in plastics, as the businessman in the 1967 film The Graduateinsisted. Rather, the future is in China. If a multinational corporation doesn’t shoehorn Chin...

Robin Hood, Friend of Liberty

Who among us isn't familiar with the legend of Robin Hood? A friend of the oppressed, kind to women and children, a robber of the rich and giver to the poor (which has warmed the hearts of...

  • Greece: Same Tragedy, Different Scripts

  • The CIA's Worst-Kept Secret: Newly Declassified Files Confirm United States Collaboration with Nazis

  • Japan's Gift to FDR

  • Stealth Superpower

  • Robin Hood, Friend of Liberty

The Final Frontier

The following text, hand-written in its original form, was found in the summer of 2003, in a sealed envelope, glued on the back-cover’s inside of an old book (edition of 1965). The book was recently purchased from a private library that was being cleared after the owner’s death. It was not possible to determine the original, or any possible intermediate owners.

Piri Reis Map

In 1929, a group of historians found an amazing map drawn on a gazelle skin. Research showed that it was a genuine document drawn in 1513 by Piri Reis, a famous admiral of the Turkish fleet in the sixteenth century. His passion was cartography. His high rank within the Turkish navy allowed him to have a privileged access to the Imperial Library of Constantinople. The Turkish admiral admits in a series of notes on the map that he compiled and copied the data from a large number of source maps, some of which dated back to the fourth century...

The man behind the Iron Mask

On November 19, 1703, a man who had spent 40 years of his life in several prisons throughout France was buried in Bastille’s Saint Paul Cemetery. Scripts by Voltaire and, mainly, Alexander Dumas, made this man one of the most famous prisoners of all ages, even if his name was never revealed. He is known as the man behind the Iron Mask.

Fibonacci Numbers in Nature

  The sequence, in which each number is the sum of the two preceding numbers is known as the Fibonacci series: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987, 1597, 2584, 4181, ...  (each number is the sum of the previous two).

Ancient nuclear reactors

In the beginning of the 70’s, a strange discovery created a sensation. A load of uranium that was intended for the French nuclear industry, was found to have a content in 235U , the fissionable isotope of uranium, smaller than expected. This discovery led to a series of assumptions ranging from fears for theft of fissionable material by some unknown country or organization to scenarios of UFO involvement, or confirmation of the existence of an advanced ancient civilization. However the truth was still more impressive.

  • Greek Lighthouses

  • The Final Frontier

  • Piri Reis Map

  • The man behind the Iron Mask

  • Fibonacci Numbers in Nature

  • Ancient nuclear reactors

_________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________

Greece: Same Tragedy, Different Scripts

economy2Cafés are full in Athens, and droves of tourists still visit the Parthenon and go island-hopping in the fabled Aegean. But beneath the summery surface, there is confusion, anger, and despair as this country plunges into its worst economic crisis in decades. The global media has presented Greece, tiny Greece, as the epicenter of the second stage of the global financial crisis, much as it portrayed Wall Street as ground zero of the first stage. Yet there is an interesting difference in the narratives surrounding these two episodes.

 

The CIA's Worst-Kept Secret: Newly Declassified Files Confirm United States Collaboration with Nazis

international"Honest and idealist ... enjoys good food and wine ... unprejudiced mind ..."

That's how a 1952 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) assessment described Nazi ideologue Emil Augsburg, an officer at the infamous Wannsee Institute, the SS think tank involved in planning the Final Solution. Augsburg's SS unit performed "special duties," a euphemism for exterminating Jews and other "undesirables" during the Second World War. Although he was wanted in Poland for war crimes, Augsburg managed to ingratiate himself with the U.S. CIA, which employed him in the late 1940s as an expert on Soviet affairs. Recently released CIA records indicate that Augsburg was among a rogue's gallery of Nazi war criminals recruited by U.S. intelligence agencies shortly after Germany surrendered to the Allies.

 

Japan's Gift to FDR

ph_02It was about 9:30 on the evening of December 6, 1941. Navy Lieutenant Lester R. Schulz, special deputy communication watch officer, assigned that evening to the White House "to receive [a] special message for the President," proceeded to President Roosevelt's study with a locked pouch containing important documents. The president had been entertaining, but as soon as he learned that the courier had arrived, he left his guests to go to his White House study to await this delivery. As Schulz would later testify, when he entered the president was sitting at his desk, his friend and close associate, Harry Hopkins, standing nearby. Schulz opened the pouch and handed the president a sheaf of "perhaps 15 typewritten pages" clipped together.
 

U.S. Energy Policy Creating a New Generation of Dr. Strangeloves

 

international3President Eisenhower is well-remembered for warning the public in his final address to the nation to “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence . . . by the military-industrial complex.” But it is little known that Eisenhower, in that same speech further cautioned that “we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”

 

Stealth Superpower

internationalThe future is no longer in plastics, as the businessman in the 1967 film The Graduateinsisted. Rather, the future is in China. If a multinational corporation doesn’t shoehorn China into its business plan, it courts the ridicule of its peers and the outrage of its shareholders. The language of choice for ambitious undergraduates is Mandarin. Apocalyptic futurologists are fixated on an eventual global war between China and the United States. China even occupies valuable real estate in the imaginations of our fabulists. Much of the action of Neal Stephenson’s novel The Diamond Age, for example, takes place in a future neo-Confucian China, while the crew members of the space ship on the cult TV show Firefly mix Chinese curse words into their dialogue.

 

Wave Generators- Power From the Sea

environmentAnyone who has played in the ocean surf or experienced the current of a river, felt the tug of outgoing or incoming surf, recognizes that there is energy contained in moving bodies of water. Harnessing that energy to create electricity has been in third position, behind solar and wind, as a source of alternative energy. But now, advances in technology are changing that situation. Commercially viable prototypes and active production models operating in wave farms are currently producing electricity successfully. The World Energy Council has described wave energy as a concentrated form of solar energy. With three quarters of the earth covered in water, wave power is an inexhaustible source of clean energy.

 

Short History of Scotch Whisky

Legend has it that St Patrick introduced distilling to Ireland during his lifetime and that this secret passed to Scotland when Irish travelers settled there more than 1500 years ago. In countries such as Scotland where grapes were not plentiful the distilling technique was applied to grains, with the resulting whisky being produced in monasteries and being used for medicinal purposes. It was prescribed for all manner of ailments and if it did not cure it certainly had an uplifting effect on the patients.

 

China’s Navy an Emerging Global Force

hanWhile still a long way off from challenging the United States as the predominant world naval power, China’s modernized People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) is beginning to take a more assertive role in an expanding theater of operations. Previously content on patrolling coastal waters and preparing for an armed conflict with Taiwan, China now has a naval presence all along commercial sea routes to the Middle East and has stepped up military operations in the contested waters of the East and South China Seas.

 

Tsunami: One of Nature's Most Destructive Forces

tsounamiIn preparing to write my novel Tsunami, about a fictional undersea volcano on the verge of exploding and sending a monster tsunami smashing into California, I did a great deal of research into the world of natural disasters. I leaned heavily on NOAA, USGS, NASA and dozens of library and university sources for my information. One thing became clear as I dug into the research: tsunamis are not self generating. They are always the product of some other natural event.

 

Robin Hood, Friend of Liberty

history3Who among us isn't familiar with the legend of Robin Hood? A friend of the oppressed, kind to women and children, a robber of the rich and giver to the poor (which has warmed the hearts of socialists and totalitarians ever since), Robin was pursued throughout Sherwood Forest by the cruel Sheriff of Nottingham. Over the following centuries, later legends introduced the familiar characters we've come to know. His love, Maid Marian, and his band of outlaws known as the Merry Men; Little John, Friar Tuck, Will Scarlet and the rest. Later ballads introduced the legend that Robin was a fallen nobleman, Robert the Earl of Huntingdon or Robin of Loxley, ruined by treachery.
 

Your views

What do you think about the story known as "The Phiadelphia Experiment"?
 
,,,,,,,,,,
,,,,,,,,,,

Your views

How do you feel about the response to the Greek economy crisis
 
,,,,,,,,,,
,,,,,,,,,,