at the beginning of Christmas
It’s the holidays, or rather, not, because due to the way print schedules work, Feedback will be writing this holiday edition in the first week of December. We’ve ordered Mrs Feedback gifts, we still haven’t figured out what Feedback Jr is going to get Mrs Feedback (with Feedback’s money), we’ve put up zero decorations and we’re looking forward to multiple school events. we will be asked to pretend to be a party for the sake of the children. In short, Feedback feels grinchy.
So this seems like a good time to grumble NORAD follows SantaOne of those initiatives that the feedback can’t quite believe. NORAD, of course, is the North American Aerospace Defense Command, and its main job is to use a combination of satellites and radar to detect anything flying into North American airspace, like Chinese weather balloons on the street. But on December 24th, there is an elaborate exercise, led by volunteers, that follows Santa’s journey around the world. You can call a number for updates, check his progress on a website and even follow him on social media.
How this tradition started is quite complicated. A fact sheet on the NORAD website states that a happy story: “NORAD has been tracking Santa Claus since 1955, when a small child accidentally dialed an unlisted telephone number at the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) (predecessor to NORAD) Operations Center… after seeing a promotion in a local Santa Claus As he was calling the newspaper, Air Force Colonel Harry Shoup, the commander of the watch that night, quickly realized that a mistake had been made, and the Santa Ipar He assured the young man that he would ensure a safe journey from Polo.
But this is the story the truth? This is difficult to fully explain. The details differ between accounts, for one thing how Shoup initially respondedto how many calls he came that first year. What is clear, however, is that all this It started at the height of the cold war. NORAD is there to detect incoming nuclear missiles, so it’s inherently terrifying: its headquarters is literally a bunker dug into a mountain. Where is a monster tracks Santa It was, and is, a great way to give it a tasteful look. On the one hand, if a nuclear war starts, NORAD will almost certainly play an important role in it; on the other hand, it makes a nice follower of Santa.
However, Feedback’s biggest gripe with the whole thing is that we’re 90 percent sure it was the inspiration for the new Christmas fantasy-action-comedy-thriller. One Red. In this stacked changer of a movie, Santa’s journey is reimagined as a sort of North Pole secret service escort of fighter jets and a militaristic security operation led by Dwayne Johnson. This looks like one of the worst movies of the year and Feedback strongly suspects that NORAD Tracks Santa is ultimately to blame.
Long setup
Speaking of tracking intangibles, an Australian research project is asking people to monitor their flatulence. It is inevitably called Dial your Fart.
Using a free smartphone app, participants “will follow up the quantity and quality of their output, including attributes such as stench, loudness, duration, duration and detectability”. Feedback appreciates the precisely guided use of the word “linger” and points out that the duration of a fart can range from “transient” to “permanent”.
The aim is to understand more about “one of the leading gut health symptoms experienced by Australians”, specifically “excessive flatulence”, which 43% of Australians say they experience most days.
Reviews cannot be accepted The Guardiantitle about the project, “Wind energy“. We also cannot support the decision to limit the study to Australia. Fortunately, however, others are taking notice, as shown by our amazing feature on page 42 about researchers trying to catch pranksters. And their work is especially important at this time of year: in many countries, we are about to eat meat, mince pies and, above all, huge Brussels sprouts by the millions.
Cheap for the price
Readers who don’t have gifts for their loved ones yet: bad luck, you’ve missed a golden opportunity. London auction house Christie’s recently had its first science fiction and fantasy auctionbeing the indicated quotation Dune’s Bible: A collection of documents about Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 1975 unproduced film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s book. the dune. This is the perfect excuse for Feedback to get something off our chest, so.
Jodorowsky’s the dune has taken on near-mythical status: one of the great what-ifs of science fiction cinema. A minimum 10-hour epic starring Orson Welles and Mick Jagger, with production design by HR Giger (later. alien fame). If he had managed to do that, it would have been a classic.
Here’s the thing. Jodorowsky is one of the most pretentious filmmakers to ever write a screenplay with a description of his penis. Feedback learned from Danny Peary Cult MoviesFeaturing Jodorowsky’s 1970 mystical western the mole. Peary described “too many references, Jungian and religious symbols/artifacts…too many jokes and dark images for anyone but Jodorowsky to know what’s going on.” Imagine that for more than 10 hours. We were saved.
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