The Brown Note

There has been an enduring myth and legend in noise research and musical circles ....

No One Knew What Was Going To Happen Next .....

  ... its that of the infamous "Brown Note".

It Was Only A Matter Of Time

The Covid-19 lockdowns have been wearing to all of us ....

Lockdown Boredom Strikes Teens Harder Than Most ....

 .... but for those unlikely to die of it, the lack of social life has been even more wearing. 

Spectre of the Brocken

When I recently blogged on the urban legend of the 'Slender Man' .....

I thought that would be the end of the matter. Particularly since the origin of the myth was well known and documented.

The Manchester 'Canal Pusher'

The Story – Known as “The Pusher” …. A serial killer has been stalking the canals of Manchester, pushing people into the canals. He has killed dozens of people, and the police are not any closer to catching him, or are suppressing the truth about his existence.

Manchester Has Many Canals ......

There are about 10 miles of canals running through central Manchester, dating back to the city's industrial heyday in the 18th and 19th Centuries, and there could easily have been the basis of another public transport system in the city had a little bit of imagination or foresight been shown in the 1950’s. But instead, the story claims that the canals are underused crime hot-spots, where a killer can stalk with impunity.

Down Periscope

Virginia-class submarines costing $1.76 billion each, and starting with the USS Colorado that's expected to be commissioned in November, will be controlled via Xbox controllers to manoeuvre their periscopes.

X Box Controller - The Lo-tech Solution.

This after the heavy and clunky joystick and control panel, that Lockheed Martin developed to control these submarines periscopes, were found to be likely to cost around $38,000 each.

Cash Point

The myth and legend of the US singer Johnny Cash still makes waves after his death .... it seems that as a vocal defender of 'prisoners rights' in the US, his voice was listened to by the authorities, not so much for his high profile (there were other campaigners who were singers etc), but because there was an 'urban legend' then doing the rounds, that like the words of one of his songs, he had 'shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die'.

Johnny Cash Prison Performer and Prisoner Rights Campaigner

In fact, apart from a few nights in various 'drunk tanks' across America, the nearest he had spent to 'hard time', was when he held prison concerts such as those concerts and recordings from Folsom and San Quentin Prisons.

Johnny Cash - Drunk Tank Mugshot

Just goes to show that its often the 'legend' or 'myth', that people prefer to believe in, rather than the plain old truth.

Web Spread Lies and Myths

We have talked before about 'urban myths' and the power of the web to disseminate them ..... this is as nasty an example as you could wish for .....

Rescuers Pull A Man From The Libyan Embassy Attack

There is a story doing the rounds amongst right wing conspiracists and anti-muslim groups on the web, that the late US ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, wasn't just murdered in the attack on his embassy building, but that he was either sexually raped, or raped with an instrument before he died.

Urban Myths Strike Again

There are urban legends that take generations to develop, and then there are flash myths .... our new digital lifestyles mean that word of mouth is faster than ever and this is what struck the car salesman of Afghanistan (talking of tuff jobs) ...... an urban legend has sprung up that caused the local car buyers to develop a curious aversion for registration plates containing the number 39.

For some unexplained reason the number 39 is suddenly held as a mark of great shame by Afghan's, but no one knows why anymore, or what the cause of this dislike is. One explanation given is that the taboo started because a pimp had '39' on his number plate, but in which case what about the other numbers on the pimp plate? Another explanation is that it stems from an old way of calculating numbers from letters and numbers into letters called "Abjad" ... but why 39 would be an issue isn't covered by that explanation either.

Rome Wasn't Built In A Day

Rome Wasn't Built In A Day .... but apparently many Romans this week thought it could be knocked down in one.

In an odd story, it appears that the urban grapevine had created a legend, which was that the late seismologist Raffaele Bendand (who died in 1979), had predicted that the city would be devastated by an earth quake on 11 May 2011. Consequently, and despite special programmes having been run on state TV calling for calm, reports suggested that as many as an additional 18% of city employees planned to stay away from work to avoid the city on that date.

Bendandi, who was knighted by Mussolini in 1927 for his prophetic meteorological skills, after he apparently used his theory that the movement of the planets caused seismic activity, to accurately predict a 1923 quake that killed 1,000 people. He was also banned from making public predictions, on pain of exile .... and he never actually made any further predictions about the future. Paola Lagorio the President of the the foundation that honours Bendandi said "I can say with absolute certainty that in the papers of Raffaele Bendandi there is no provision for an earthquake in Rome on the 11 May 2011". Needless to say, Rome wasn't even ruffled by a tiny tremor on the day .... but oddly, in one of those coincidence that fuel these urban myths, the town of Lorca in Spain was hit by a large earthquake on the day.

So, be prepared for more such stories next year, as the same urban myth suggested two more such catastrophic events in May 2012.