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I was amused to see that the Regan family has moved from NYC to London in DE.
I understand that this next bit is supposed to be some kind of sportsball score. I assume Cricket. However, it looks closer to a math equation than a score. Can you please translate it?
September 25: St. Kilda defeat Hawthorn 16.9 (105) to 14.11 (95) in the 1971 VFL GF at the MCG in front of a crowd of 148,117 spectators.
The bit about the mischievous wizard ensorcelling the parking meters was genius.
Thanks!
The score is from the Victorian Football League grand final, so is Australian Rules Football, the best code of football. The first number represents goals, or major scores, which are worth 6 points apiece, whilst the second represents behinds, or minor scores, which are worth 1 point. It has the effect of improving one’s grasp of the 6 times tables.
As for the parking meters, it seemed a very French thing to do.
Bernard,
They'd be rather distant ones, given that Jack is a Mancunian transplant to London, but I wouldn't completely discount it. I do know he has a cousin with the Oxford City Police and another who is an up and coming lawyer.
Belushi,
Every year, I slot in the VFL Grand Final, among other references. It is where my interests lie, to the exclusion of soccer, rugby or gridiron, all of which are deficient sports in comparison. Cricket has its rather larger role, but lags well behind baseball, American football and so forth as the most popular American sport. Basketball hasn't made the jump to the mainstream yet, if you'll excuse the pun, nor is it likely to do so to the same extent as the @ 1970s.
I must confess to having never seen Blue Bloods. Reading up about it, it does seem rather straightforward. One thing that would be different is the ethnicity and religious angle, with Ireland converting from Roman Catholic and there not being quite the same 19th century migration waves from Ireland to the USA, particularly with regard to the absence of the potato famine wave. Irish migration to the USA in the 1800s was not entirely absent, but wasn't driven by the same factors or from the same basis. The consequences of this are primarily demographic and particularly cultural.
Simon Darkshade wrote: ↑Tue Feb 07, 2023 7:05 am
Every year, I slot in the VFL Grand Final, among other references. It is where my interests lie, to the exclusion of soccer, rugby or gridiron, all of which are deficient sports in comparison. Cricket has its rather larger role, but lags well behind baseball, American football and so forth as the most popular American sport. Basketball hasn't made the jump to the mainstream yet, if you'll excuse the pun, nor is it likely to do so to the same extent as the @ 1970s.
You might think the information in the bolded large font above is correct, but you would be wrong.
Blue Bloods, being a story about a multigenerational cop family in NYC, is to me, a show about the NYC police department in a perfect world. The patriarch of the family is the retired NYC police commissioner, his son is the current NYC police commissioner, there's a couple of grandkids who are cops, and one who is a DA. Another grandson is deceased in the line of duty. Apparently the family has been cops since the 1800's. They do a pretty good job at looking at various policies put in place by @ NYC and the NYC police, and give them what appears to me a fairly good examination.
Its certainly a booster show for the NYC police department, to the point that when Tom Selleck (current police commissioner) is on the streets of NYC, all the rank and file police (well, the vast majority of them, maybe not ALL of them) actually salute him.
My wife loves it. Its a reasonably good watch, but I can take it or leave it.
On the first matter, there would need to be a very strong argument to sway me. Gridiron stretches a 60 minute game to 3 hours, replete with rolling rules, a multitude of officials and televisual contrivances, yet doesn't manage to be much beyond a low scoring regional variation of rugby with padding. Soccer for me is extremely boring, as the vast majority of play is wasted effort and passing; it is low scoring, yet manages to include the ludicrous notion of a penalty shoot out; most games are very, very similar; the primadonna behaviour of the players, replete with faked injuries and over the top celebrations, is galling; and the level of fan violence and bad behaviour is disturbing. Rugby is largely hitting, tackling and assorted gruntery without skill, being made worse by the single direction of play, the lack of kicking or handballing, no high marking and the general boofheadedness of their commentators.
As said, Blue Bloods may be accurate in general behaviour terms, but would probably have different cultural elements.
Sorry, I see I neglected to put a face after my comment about your love of Aussie Rules football.
That being said, I happen to agree with much of your comments about the various games. I have been particularly annoyed over the last decade and a half about how they keep changing the rules to make it "safer" for the players, when what they're really doing is making it less likely that their multi-million dollar investments are going to not be able to be popular anymore. The only rules change that I think is actually in the players interest in gridiron football is the concussion protocols, and I think in that case, they may need to go further. The rest of them are to maximize the income, rather than make the game more enjoyable, or to make the fans happy. Particularly the TV timeouts and such.
It isn't a love, as the current game has been so bastardised, altered and twisted as to make it unrecognisable from the tough yet skillful heyday of the 1970s-1990s, along with the corrupting influence of money and Americanisation having further twisted it horrifically. I don't watch or follow it any more. But before all that, it was markedly better than the others for the reasons laid out, in my view.
I quite agree on concussion protocols for any contact sport - a simple measure to prevent harm. The nature of gridiron makes it more likely to occur, even as the padding and helmets attract quite a bit of ridicule from other parts of the English speaking sporting world. If we took away all the ridiculous protective equipment, the game would still have quite a few flaws - there is next to no kicking, most players will never touch the ball and the core systems seem designed to head-on collisions rather than scope to avoid them with skill. The monetisation tactics, such as dragging out the matches, TV timeouts and so forth, are just the sour icing atop an off cake for me. It isn't really a case of what people were brought up on here, as I didn't follow Aussie Rules until I was 12 and was made to play soccer when I was 6 or 7, which is when I began to form my opinion of the latter being utterly pants, but I do understand that it can be. Horses for courses and all that. I'm over professional sports as a whole.
Thus, about the only 'personal' sporting touch I have bought to Dark Earth thus far is a bit of mention of Australian Rules football and some of the more in depth fiddling with cricket records and history (no Packer World Series Cricket here!), with the rest flowing on from the different world. I haven't really endeavoured to go too deeply into alternate soccer history or changing the micro-outcomes and fortunes of American sports, as they are someone else's cup of tea; I've seen and enjoyed The Natural and Field of Dreams, but can never really get into baseball, as it is just rounders at heart. I will be following through some of the butterflies and changes on soccer with some developments in the 1970s, but they are more from a macro level, particularly with regards to spectators and the lack of a rise of hooliganism, particularly in England, and are driven by a desire to explore the development and evolution of a very different society.
October
October 1: Walt Disney opens Walt Disney World, a new entertainment complex in Florida utilising the cutting edge in modern magical technology, consisting of the Magic Kingdom amusement park, the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow planned community, an integrated adventure waterpark and numerous hotels and golf courses.
October 2: RAF English Electric Lightnings shoot down an Indonesian Air Force MiG-25 that accidentally violates British airspace near Singapore, surprising Soviet advisors in Djarkarta with the performance of their new air to air missiles. The Red pilot is rescued by a Royal Navy patrol boat and returned to Indonesia on October 19th after negotiations.
October 3: US Army troops manning the Liberty Line along the border of the Demilitarized Zone between North Vietnam and South Vietnam report that previous signs of enemy activity have, for all intents and purposes, ceased. Long range observation indicates that construction of a new series of fortifications on the northern side of the DMZ back from the older ones has been complete.
October 4: The Budokan arena and Yasukuni dog racing track are destroyed by a freak rogue dragon rampage no Chiyoda, Tokyo, with the maddened beast killing 397 before being subdued by an invention of Dr. Daisuke Serizawa operated by USAF Captain Jeff Falcon.
October 5: A meterorite falls in the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo, scattering a number of strange fragments around the verges of the city of Marilia. The gold and silver coloured stones seem to glow with an inner luminescence that sets off a number of MBCR alarms employed by Brazilian military forces involved in the clean up.
October 6: The Israeli Defence Forces completes a surprise simulated test of its emergency mobilisation system, with their computers modelling a successful call up over 800,000 reservists over 48 hours, along with the activation of the Army's six reserve divisions and movement of units to their wartime stations. Fast mobilisation is seen as the key factor in the defence of Israel, as, in the event of a war, the IDF would be required to hold the line for between 72 and 96 hours before allied reinforcements could arrive in strength.
October 7: Swedish detectives Kalle Blomqvist and Ture Sventon successfully apprehend a gang of dastardly robbers who had stolen the royal stocks of surstromming and sill being assembled for next year's coronation.
October 8: Journalists from the Bulgarian newspaper Trud investigating reports of the marked increase in the orcish and goblinoid population of the slums of Sofia and Varna publish an extensive expose claiming that the surge in numbers threatens social cohesion and the long term stability of the state.
October 9: The War Office announces that a further four new infantry regiments will be raised over the next year to reflect the evolving needs of the Army.
October 10: Debut of Upstairs, Downstairs on Thames Television, a historical drama depicting the lives and experiences of the masters and servants of a fictional British aristocratic family in the late Victorian, Edwardian and Second Georgian periods.
October 11: HMSS Dreadnought sets out from Mars for another outer solar system voyage to Saturn, taking advantage of their relative orbital positions and the tides of the solar aether.
October 12: Beginning of the 2500 Year Celebration of Persia at the ruins of Pasargadae, with young Shah Kamar leading a ceremony of solemn homage at the Tomb of Cyrus the Great.
October 13: The North American-Convair F-16 Falcon enters initial test service with the United States Air Force. The lightweight single engined tactical fighter is expected to fill a variety of roles in TAC and the forward deployed air forces and is regarded as a highly versatile and maneuverable design. With a top speed of Mach 2.5, a combat ceiling of 60,000ft and a combat radius of 500 miles, the F-16 has attracted attention from a number of European, Asian and South American states, with Byzantine Greece being particularly interested.
October 14: Formal approval is given by the full Politburo to the revised Five Year Plan, with the Soviet Union experiencing its most prosperous and positive economic conditions to date.
October 15: An emotional reunion between two long-separated paramours in MacArthur Park, Los Angeles is spoiled after someone left the cake out in the rain and passing Hollywood actor Richard Harris accidentally drank their wine.
October 16: Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis mark their return to their successful partnership with the new comedy caper A Casino in Las Vegas?, a hilarious slapstick adventure based around Nevada's notoriously strict anti-gambling laws.
October 17: Jane's All the World's Helicopters publishes an article on the leading countries by civil rotary fleets of 1971, with the superpowers unsurprisingly leading the world, lead by the United States with 10,296, the USSR with 3862, Britain with 2579 and China with 1535; the Soviet 'civil' helicopters and rotodynes are all state owned and are regarded as military assets in the event of crisis or conflict.
October 18: King Zod of Albania takes to the streets of Tirana in disguise to randomly reward the good and punish the wicked according to his own particular interpretation of morality, with his subjects reportedly having either handfuls of silver coins or overripe fruit cast at them by a figure in a fedora and trench coat.
October 19: Swedish and Finnish military intelligence produce a joint report on the sharp rise in Red Army forces assigned to the Archangelsk and Murmansk Military Districts, with the latest attachment of a further Army (albeit one made up of four rifle divisions) seen as tipping the Scandinavian military balance towards Moscow's favour.
October 20: Independent journalist Michael Jagger begins filming an expansive travelogue for the BBC following the travels of Ibn Battuta through Africa and the Middle East.
October 21: The Nintendo Playing Card Co., Ltd. declares bankruptcy, having never recovered from its loss of a deal for the distribution of Disney themed cards. Their burgeoning electronic equipment sideline was purchased by the Far Eastern wing of Ferranti EKCO during the subsequent sale of assets.
October 22: American Chuck Norris defends his world champion title at the International Karate Championship in Tokyo, winning for the fourth year in a row.
October 23: NORAD begins testing a new supercomputer simulation system to game out the course and outcome of various nuclear war scenarios, with the 255 initial scenarios ranging from the predictable 'US First Strike' and 'USSR First Strike' to the more unlikely 'Uganda Offensive' and 'Caspian Defense'.
October 24: A wave of communist inspired industrial unrest in black settlements of South Africa subsides after concentrated police and security service raids and deployment of the Army on public presence missions.
October 25: Resistance fighters of the Polish Home Army transmit garbled reports to the West of some new form of Soviet military tripods being tested near Lvov.
October 26: The Royal Air Force initiates a new program for identifying and developing future potential fighter pilots whilst still in secondary school through liaison with educational authorities and cadet forces.
October 27: Former President Theodore Roosevelt celebrates his 113th birthday, putting him behind only Abraham Lincoln as the longest lived President. In his advanced years, he has begun to take things easier, giving up rafting at 110 and no longer using firearms indoors.
October 28: An 12 year old girl is successfully exorcised by Jesuit priest Father Lankester Merrin in Georgetown, Washington D.C.
October 29: The United States Army and the Department of Energy begin a joint project for the investigation of the potential employment of psychic and psionic energy in military and intelligence contexts, with a particular accent on the curious phenomenon of the 'Tomorrow Children'.
October 30: A dam collapse in Romania destroys large parts of two villages, killing almost two hundred. Communist officials suppress the news of the tragedy, claiming that only 48 died in a localised industrial accident. Romanian President and General Secretary of the Communist Party Chivu Stoica pays a secret nocturnal visit to the site.
October 31: Minneapolis youngsters Charlie Brown, 8, and Linus Van Pelt, 7, finally see The Great Pumpkin after years of trying, aided and facilitated by Brown's beagle's famous great uncle.
Simon Darkshade wrote: ↑Sun Feb 12, 2023 12:39 pm
October 5: A meterorite falls in the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo, scattering a number of strange fragments around the verges of the city of Marilia. The gold and silver coloured stones seem to glow with an inner luminescence that sets off a number of MBCR alarms employed by Brazilian military forces involved in the clean up.
Should it say NBCR here? Searching for MBCR only gives search results about "Mindfulness-Based Cancer Recovery"....
MBCR is the Dark Earth version - Magic, Biological, Chemical and Radiological. The meteorites have some interesting properties that don't extend to extraterrestrial biological weapons, poisonous gasses or things that give you a healthy glow...
Oh, he certainly does. It is a bit safer than indoor skeet shooting at his age. He doesn't have much truck for Oriental martial arts, preferring the Western traditions.
Simon Darkshade wrote: ↑Mon Feb 13, 2023 11:36 am
Oh, he certainly does. It is a bit safer than indoor skeet shooting at his age. He doesn't have much truck for Oriental martial arts, preferring the Western traditions.
IRL, TR look up judo after being blinded in one eye boxing.
Here, there is a different and more developed notion of Western martial arts, both armed and unarmed, so that the Japanese styles come across not so much as a sheer novelty, but as an exotic variation of a known flavour group.
What historically emerged as the likes of French savate and Irish collar and elbow wrestling have a bit more of a connection running back to the Middle Ages. Rather than declining away into regional curiosities, they develop on a different path into a number of different forms. In addition, just as they hit the bump of the Marquis of Queensbury rules of boxing, there is an earlier injection of some Eastern influence through Bartitsu.
November
November 1: Sir Christopher Cockerill unveils his latest advanced hovercraft at an exposition at Cowes, the Hoverfreighter. A joint project of Saunders-Roe and the NRDC, the 6,000t vessel can carry 100 containers of cargo and 200 passengers at 150 knots. The Royal Navy is known to be interested in an amphibious assault tank landing ship version following on from the success of the earlier Argent class super hovercraft.
November 2: The latest in a series of clashes between Imperial Chinese and Soviet troops near the Mongolian border threatens to escalate after a protracted exchange of artillery fire before a localised ceasefire is personally negotiated by the respective commanders.
November 3: The Public Schools Thirty Mile Hop, delayed due to illness to the Graybridge school leopard, is held in the Yorkshire Moors. The traditional competition has been championed by the Graybridge Headmaster, Dr. M. Tomkinson, himself a former hopping champion at the 1920 Paris Olympics.
November 4: President Kennedy indicates in an interview that a new national health care bill will be introduced to Congress in the new year, stating that the United States would no longer remain behind large parts of the rest of the free world in this regard.
November 5: Royal Space Force Space Commander Roger Blake is appointed as the new Officer Commanding, Moonbase Alpha, with the promotion coming after his renowned success in the Dreadnought expedition to Jupiter and Saturn.
November 6: The United States conducts an underground nuclear test on Amchitka Islands in the Canadian Aleutians under Project Cannikin, with the successful test of the W101 thermonuclear warhead having a yield of 5 megatons.
November 7: A pro-Indonesian coalition wins a plurality of votes in the Western New Guinea election, a result regarded as dubious by Western observers. Australian intelligence estimates the presence of up to 10,000 Indonesian personnel across Western New Guinea and recommends Commonwealth reinforcement of the Australian half of the island.
November 8: The United States Army fields a new series of military robots, the Robotron 386, an articulated wheeled automaton armed with twin machine guns suitable for mobile sentry operations.
November 9: Ratification of the Okinawa Reversion Agreement by the United States Senate by a margin of 102-6. It permits full operation of US military facilities on the island without reference to the Japanese government and ongoing operation of the current nuclear bases.
November 10: The Peruvian government announces the nationalisation of all television companies within the nation.
November 11: An errant weather observation balloon operated by the Luftwaffe inadvertently drifts across the Iron Wall along the Neisse into Poland, with the dreadful potential to start an international incident of dire proportions avoided by it being mistaken (by virtue of its bright red colour) as a wayward asset of the GDR’s secretive Rotes Ballonkorps.
November 12: Britain conducts an underground atomic test on Christmas Island, the first in a new series of tests of new advanced warheads.
November 13: Captain N. Romanov, better known as Tsarevich Nikolai Alexandrovich, relocates to the United States on exchange with the US Army's 1st Infantry Regiment, better known as 'The Old Guard', from the 1st Grenadier Guards.
November 14: CIA assets in the German Democratic Republic smuggle images and data regarding a new main battle tank in service with the National Volksarmee.
November 15: The Prime Minister of Thailand attempts to launch a coup against his own government, but is inadvertently taken into custody by loyalist troops who surround his residence after misdirected communications add him to the list to be arrested.
November 16: The Ministry of Trade and Industry reports that British overseas investment has grown by 12% over the past three years, with particular gains in the Middle East and Africa further contributing to the strong 'invisible earnings' driven by British interests in the Empire and abroad.
November 17: Canadian newspaper reporters investigating a British Columbian farmer’s report of the incredible adventures of his curious cat and a pug-nosed pup on their quest to return home to their farm interview the animals and their new mates, suggesting that they take their story to CBC; the good natured wholesomeness of an animal story would provide an attractive subject for a Christmas feature.
November 18: An RAF Bristol Bluebird hypersonic strategic reconnaissance plane flying over the Arctic reports spotting what he describes as a ‘rainbow bridge’ at 85,000ft.
November 19: Rhodesian special forces and commandos raid multiple rebel encampments across the border in Portuguese Angola in response to increasing subversion and guerrilla attacks in Western Rhodesia.
November 20: A party of Scottish schoolboys and their leaders become lost in a remote area of the Cairngorm Plateau in a bitter blizzard and, on the brink of disaster, are miraculously rescued by a nine foot tall figure seemingly covered in green leaves, vines and flowers. The party is lead to safety in the Curran shelter by their rescuer and strengthened with a warming draught, where they await their full rescue by a search team of the Royal Dwarven Regiment on the morrow.
November 21: Canadian murderers Gerald Archer and Wayne Boden are hanged in Montreal and London.
November 22: The West Indies defeat the United States by 46 runs in the First Test at New York City, thanks to a first innings 129 from newcomer Gordon Greenidge and a magnificent 164 and 102* by Vivian Richards.
November 23: Proposals for the outright elimination of corporal punishment in primary schools in London are conditionally rejected by the Baxter Commission of the London School Board, citing the disconnect this could potentially create between the broader societal use of judicial corporal punishment and wishing to avoid the issues experienced at certain magical colleges.
November 24: A mysterious man, later dubbed by the media as ‘D.B. Cooper’ parachutes from a Northwest Orient Airlines Boeing 727 that he had hijacked, escaping with the $250,000 ransom. FBI agents scour the area of southwest Washington where he had jumped, but only find his discarded parachute and a single $20 bill left stuck to a tree trunk.
November 25: President Kennedy’s eldest son, John F. Kennedy Jr. celebrates his 11th birthday with an elaborate party at the White House where he and his guests are permitted to borrow the President’s rubber swan. In addition to him, the First Children consist of Caroline (14), Patrick (9), Joseph (7) and 4 year old twins Rose and William.
November 26: The New York Times publishes a feature on 'The Arab Renaissance', the rapid modernisation and development of the Arab Union over the course of the 1960s and early 1970s, and paints a glowing picture of the potential for the future of the confederation.
November 27: Quarterly sales figures for board war games in the United States continues to climb, with the success of Avalon Hill's Kriegspiel, PanzerBlitz, Overlord and Crusader leading the way across the industry.
November 28: The US Army retires its last unit of CH-47 Chinooks from active service, with their heavy lift role taken over by the Kaman Super Rotodyne. The Chinook fleet saw particularly hard service in Vietnam, where over 200 were lost.
November 29: Activation of the FBI's new National Crime Computer, an intelligent supercomputer linked to police databases across the United States and to the resources of Interpol.
November 30: The Canadian Army activates a new Indian regiment to join the current Sioux, Huron and Iroquois, the Mohican Rangers.
Last edited by Simon Darkshade on Sat Mar 04, 2023 2:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Amid some of the cultural Easter eggs, there are perhaps three seeds in November 1971 that will grow into much more substantial developments for individual nations and the world at large.
face after my comment about your love of Aussie Rules football. 