“Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.”—Douglas Adams, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”

Douglas Adams was born on this date in 1952.

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The costliest natural disaster in world history took place five years ago today. The 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami started with a magnitude 9.0 megathrust earthquake—the most powerful to ever hit Japan and the fourth most powerful in recorded history and one that shifted the entire planet on its axis by half a foot—followed by a tsunami that struck the Sendai area particularly hard (100 foot waves reached several miles inland) and flooded the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant complex, which led to several nuclear meltdowns at that facility. The World Bank has estimated that the combined cost of these several events topped $235 billion. More than 15,000 individuals lost their lives in the quake-tsunami event.
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“Lolly Willowes, or The Loving Huntsman,” by Sylvia Townsend Warner was published in 1926, and on this date that year, 90 years ago today, it was the first announced selection of the Book of the Month Club, which exists to this day. The first selection committee featured Christopher Morley, Dorothy Canfield, and Heywood Broun; the current committee includes Craig Ferguson. In the late 1980s, the Club reached its peak membership of 1.5 million subscribers, but that has dwindled in subsequent years.

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Alexander Graham Bell successfully contacted his assistant, Thomas Watson, 140 years ago today. (It is not true that Watson immediately began work on inventing voicemail.) It was three days after Bell was awarded the patent for his “Improvement in telegraphy,” and it was the first proof that their invention, the telephone, worked. Watson heard his boss’ voice transmitted on the experimental apparatus in a legendary moment: “Mr. Watson—Come here—I want to see you.”

Less than ten years later, on April 15, 1885, Bell recorded his own voice on a wax and cardboard disc. This was never a great medium for recording, but it was one of many that was experimented with as a medium. Flimsy from the moment it was recorded and then dried out with age, the disc had never been played, its contents never transposed to a more permanent medium, until 2013 when audio technicians used optical scanners to recover the recording. Here (below the fold) is Alexander Graham Bell in 1885 introducing himself to us here in the 2010s:
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Adam Smith’s book on economics and philosophy, “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations,” or, more familiarly, “The Wealth of Nations,” was published by W. Strahan and T. Cadell in London 240 years ago today. It was an instant, influential, best-seller and began to be cited in taxation policy discussions within months and referenced by politicians in London and America within a year of publication. Here is my attempt from last year at explaining my understanding of economics and Adam Smith’s influence: “Higgling, Haggling, Swapping, Dickering.”

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Sixty-two years ago tonight, CBS broadcast “A Report on Senator Joseph McCarthy” on its half-hour “See It Now” news broadcast. Hosted by Edward R. Murrow, it was a close look at the Wisconsin Republican’s several year-long campaign against Communists that he had claimed had infiltrated our government and the armed forces. Murrow used video and film of McCarthy’s own speeches to show his many contradictions, obfuscations, and possible lies. McCarthy’s only replies to the show were personal and insulting against Murrow and did not address anything of substance. The McCarthy Era in its then-specific guise was ending; McCarthyism still exists. A clip (below the fold):
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