Today in History: April 29

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Operation Frequent Wind commenced on this date in 1975.

It was the operation to evacuate American civilians and some Vietnamese from Saigon as that city fell to the North Vietnamese Army. It marked the end of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

At the conclusion of two days of scrambling, some 7000 people were evacuated from Saigon by helicopter; over 50,000 were removed by fixed-wing aircraft. Almost 700 helicopter missions were flown; with no nation known as “South Vietnam” to return to, the South Vietnamese copters, some carrying U.S. insignia, were flown one-way—to U.S. ships in the South China Sea—where they were then pushed off the ships into the water to make room for more helicopters to land (photo at top). Some U.S. helicopters were ditched into the sea as well.
Read More

#BR2016: Hackathon for the Homeless

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Business Rocks 2016 hosted a global hackathon in a bid to help solve through technology the ever-growing problem of homelessness

[Two weeks ago, The Gad About Town web site participated with many others in publicizing the international tech meeting in Manchester, UK, Business Rocks 2016, with a focus on a planned hackathon to bring brilliant minds together to collaborate on solutions to homelessness. The two-day-long hackathon took place, and real solutions were created. Here is a report from the Hacktivist Culture web site.—Mark Aldrich, The Gad About Town]
Read More

Despair Has No Wings …

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

To be is to despair and to despair is to remember the thousand tightly missed connections and not-yet completed conversations that will reveal themselves eventually as never really begun. The Surrealists got despair, perhaps better than most. They adopted Existentialism’s finer frustrations and rendered them with comedy, joy, and horror in sometimes strange proportions.

The comedy of coincidence and the tragedy of imminent abandonment dominate their work. Everyone is always alone, and this fact is simultaneously hilarious and horrifying in Surrealist Art.
Read More