A fake town hid Boeing from the Japanese during World War II

By Jack Brummet, Seattle history ed.

After Pearl Harbor, Boeing Plant No. 2 in Seattle (where B 17 bombers were built) was put under heavy camouflage to prevent a Japanese aircraft attack. The roof of the huge plant was covered with fake houses, streets, and trees. No Japanese planes came anywhere near the factory (my Mom was a riveter there before she enlisted). The plant is under the darker area in the center of the above photograph. The middle shot shows employees hanging out on the roof, and a view of the roof from street level.

A closer view of the 35-acre roof of Boeing Plant 2, with homes built of canvas, trees and shrubs made of board and mesh, and streets of oil and dirt:

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Faces Drawing: third state

By Jack Brummet 

[work in progress; pencil and Sharpie on primed masonite oval board]

click to enlarge

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Digital painting: My right eye

By Jack Brummet 

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Digital art: The inner workings

By Jack Brummet

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Fifteen of the weirdest board games of all time

By Mona Goldwater, Leisure Editor

Culled from Tumblr, blogs, Wikipedia, and various web sites...

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Drawing: Faces No. ??? - Work in Progress, Stage 2

By Jack Brummet 

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Annette Funicello and The Beach Boys play "The Monkey's Uncle"

By Jack Brummet, American Music Ed.

The Beach Boys and the recently departed Annette Funicello sing the opening track in the movie The Monkey's Uncle.

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Neil Young's best hair day ever

By Jack Brummet 

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The new WikiLeaks dump: a billion words generated by SoS Henry Kissinger (+ bonus cables on the Russians needing more Joni Mitchell, CSNY, Neil Young, Don McLean, James Taylor, and Bob Dylan)

By Jack Brummet, International Intrigue Ed.

WikiLeaks has just released the the "Kissinger Cables," a collection of over 1.7 million pieces of diplomatic communications.  One billion words generated from 1973-76, when Henry Kissinger served as our Cold War Secretary of State/ Détente during the slow spinning down of the Soviet Union.  There is so much material here that you can find almost anything— like, say, the Russian thirst for soft rock. 

This new release is five times the size of Cablegate, the original WikiLeaks dump published incrementally from 2010-2011. I billion words is roughly the size of 125 novels (averaging 80,000 word per novel). 

I've only read a few of the articles, but one of the more interesting threads in the release is the Russian thirst for American "soft rock:"  

Search for "Joni Mitchell," for example, "and you'll find communications between the U.S. embassy in Moscow and the State Department, asking for more Mitchell and Don McLean in Russian lives — and to a lesser extent Neil Young — because, well, that's the Russians wanted in January 1975." -(From TheAtlanticWire.com).

Images from cables in the release:

Somehow, The Eagles and Jackson Brown did not make the list, although this cable seems to hint that they would be perfect Rock Ambassadors. 

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Poem: The Green Knight

By Jack Brummet 

You walk the hall of broken mirrors
Upon the walls of which are hung
The skulls of those who walked before you.

Filtered grey light pools
On the floor in the distance.
A green knight walks toward you,

With a battle-axe in one hand
And a branch of holly in the other.
Bercilak de Hautdesert asks if you want to play a game.

He strops the axe on his green leather pants.
The Green Knight asks you to roshambo.
"You first," he says. "Take the first swing.”

You take the axe and swing. The helmet flies
Into the stone wall.
The head rolls down the hallway.

The Green Knight picks up the head
Which tells you to meet him

At the Green Chapel New Year's morning

So that he may deal his exchange blow.
The Green Knight's head chuckles
As his footsteps fade away.
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Favorite Vatican pornography titles

By Mona Goldwater, Adult Entertainment Ed.

TorrentFreak, using Scaneye's traffic data,  was recently able to take a look at Bittorrent files that were being downloaded by IP addresses   A lot of them were just regular movies and TV shows, but then, there was a lot of kinky stuff too (S&M, anyone?).

Fleshbot details some of those sexy and kinky videos here. 

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Coincidences? JFK & Abe Lincoln

By Jack Brummet, Presidents Ed.

I don't know if you remember this ancient (pre-meme) meme, but here it is, slightly updated...

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