Can Sulphur-crested cockatoos be kept as poets?”
Are they superior to AI poets?
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20/2 vision.
My 20/800 vision pulls a sad.
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My grandparents had a sulphur-crested cockatoo as a pet. He could be downright poetical, in his way.
Interesting about yellow-crested cockatoos. I didn’t know about them. Sulphur-crested are not rare here at all. I’ve got a few squawking outside my window right now.
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“They’re taking the hobbits to Isengard!”
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Yes. Duh.
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A little while ago I wrote a tribute to Betty Lou Gerson. Now I going to continue to spotlight voice actors of note by writing a little bit about Howard McNear.
Howard McNear was all over radio. A very versatile actor. Often times his name will be in the credits and you didn’t even realize you were listening to him. He was able to disappear into his parts, is what I mean.
The earliest program I have heard him in is Jerry of the Circus from the late 1930s. This is a 15-minute daily show aimed at children. It’s about an orphan who finds a temporary home living among the unusual people who make-up a circus. Unlike a lot of children’s entertainment, this show is not annoying. The drama has a certain down-to-earth honesty about it. In this show McNear plays a clown named “Bumps.” Bumps becomes a bit of a father-figure for Jerry. McNear plays the part as a person who has seen a lot in his life. He is a clown, but he’s never foolish. The voice he uses here could best be described as blunt, and sounding like Christopher Lloyd.
That is he on the left. He was also the original “Doc” on the radio version of Gunsmoke.
As a matter of record, it should be stated that The radio series > The half-hour black and white TV series > The hour-long color TV series. Yes, the hour-long color Gunsmoke is the worst Gunsmoke. But I digress.
Towards the late 1940s he developed a voice that quickly became very popular. This is a voice with which I’m sure you will all be familiar. If the name Howard McNear sounds familiar it is probably because you know him for using this voice and personality in the role of Floyd the barber on the Andy Griffith Show.
But you are probably not be aware that he created this voice for the sole purpose of playing psychos. He quickly became a fixture on mystery and thriller radio programs. As soon as you heard him using this mild-mannered, self-effacing voice, you knew he was the reclusive killer living in a large house with a room set aside for doling out vengeance against people who had wronged him.
Don’t follow him into the basement.
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Thanks for taking the time to put together that introduction. Interesting!
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https://nowiknow.beehiiv.com/p/can-a-flying-potato-read-this-email-af2ec939610039d4
If you’ve been on an airplane recently, you probably know that — even though you’re 30,000 feet above ground — you can still send an email or a text. That’s because, increasingly, airlines are offering in-flight Wi-Fi. It’s a good idea, too: for business travelers, connectivity means you can work on the plane, and for vacationers (and particularly those with young kids), Wi-Fi can be a cure for boredom. But getting this technology on planes wasn’t so simple. Putting aside the work needed to actually get an Internet signal on a plane going 500 miles per hour while five or so miles above ground, airliners also need to make sure the signal doesn’t interfere with the gizmos that pilots use to actually fly the plane. Figuring out how to get Wi-Fi throughout the cabin of a plane too a lot of math, science, and testing.
And it also took about ten tons of potatoes.
Starting in 2006, airline manufacturer Boeing knew that making Wi-Fi consistently reliable on its planes was a big issue — consumers demanded being able to get online and the airlines that bought planes from Boeing were responsive to that. After getting planes connected, though, consumers still complained about spotty connectivity. So Boeing got to testing.
Getting a clear Wi-Fi signal throughout an empty Boeing jet turned out to be easy; the problem occurred when you filled it with passengers. All those people were blocking the signal. Boeing had some ideas for how to fix it, but testing was difficult — it’s expensive to take a plane full of people up in the air for hours at a time just to test your upload and download speeds. And asking people to sit still for hours at a time isn’t a great idea, either.
Potatoes became the solution. As seen in a photo, below, bags of potatoes can be stacked in an airplane seat to roughly model the size and shape of an adult human.
But that’s not all. Potatoes also mimic another aspect of human bodies: how we interact with radio waves. As Phys.org explains, “It turns out that potatoes—because of their water content and chemistry—absorb and reflect radio wave signals much the same way as the human body does, making them suitable substitutes for airline passengers.” The project, called Synthetic Personnel Using Dialectic Substitution, or SPUDS (heh) cut tests that previously took two weeks down to only a few hours, according to a video from Boeing. (That video contains footage of a plane full of potatoes, if you want to see this in action.)
Using the SPUDS system, Boeing was able to significantly limit the amount of Wi-Fi dead spots on their planes, all without involving real people until the final testing round. And the potatoes didn’t go to waste, either; according to CNN, they were donated to a food pantry.
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when I saw Pink Floyd in Nashville on the Division Bell tour, there were a bunch of these bootleg Ts being worn
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He was legally determined to not be a barber.
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Is that Pink?
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yes. have a cigar.
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I wish I could find a list of all the actors (I realize that extras won’t be listed anywhere). There are so many names at the tip of my tongue.
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I just found out that Björn Skifs, the lead singer of Blue Swede among other bands, was the voice of Woody in the Swedish version of Toy Story.
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To Kiruna and beyond!
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