Tag Archives: Nicolai Tesla

Headlines Du Jour ► Sunday, November 24, 2013

We have this day to blame for Sarah Palin.

While you were getting your beauty rest, the Not Now Silly interns were set loose on the internet. Their instructions? Do not return unless they have collected a bucketful of Headlines Du Jour. Once they returned the headlines were culled so that only the most interesting are used for the Sunday edition.

TODAY’S TOP HEADLINE DU JOUR:

Bomb squad says suspicious item was a burrito
Foil-wrapped object was brought in for analysis

TODAY IN EDUCATION:

Colorado school board member calls
for castration of Transgender students



Texas School Board Adopts Accurate Biology Books,
Rebuffing Last-Ditch Campaign By Creationists

SO GLAD WE ARE LIVING IN A POST-RACIAL SOCIETY:

Grosse Pointe Park cop admits taking
demeaning video, is removed from duty

Posthumous pardon in 1931 Alabama rape case
The Scottsboro Boys receive official pardons more than
80 years after being wrongly convicted by all-white juries.

11 of The Most Racist Movies Ever Made

AWKWARD!!!

Washington State GOP Chair Accuses Party Of Playing Into ‘War On Women’

TODAY’S EXCITING EPISODE OF COPS GONE WILD:

Seventeen-year-old shot in the head while in police custody

FOX “NEWS” IN THE NEWS:   

Glee Transgender Character’s Actor Fires Back at Bill O’Reilly

False Fox News Story About ‘Banned’ Pledge Of
Allegiance Results In Death Threats (VIDEOS)

Mike Huckabee Renews Assault on Sanity of a Living Wage

WOMEN’S CORNER

The Conspiracy Against Women

GUNS, GUNS, GUNS:

Federal Court OKs Lifetime
Gun Bans For Those Convicted
of Domestic Violence!

Michigan man misses at
suicide attempt and fatally
shoots woman instead

Texas GOP Lawmaker Charged With Felony In Airport Gun Incident

WHEN YOU WISH UPON A STAR:

The Disneys: Not the
happiest family on Earth

FREE THE WEED:

11 Pounds of Marijuana Mistakenly Delivered to
Florida Keys Couple: Monroe County Sheriff’s Office

CRACK CORNER:

Rob Ford and the centre of the universe
Toronto has never witnessed a global media circus of this scale.
A look at the appeal of a story at once bizarre and strangely refreshing.

Rob Ford: Concern for staff helped push
efforts to cut mayor’s budget, councillors say

A desire to allow stressed staff a “graceful exit” was one impetus to
take action against the mayor, according to Councillor Jaye Robinson.

Rob Ford: the director’s cut. A montage of two years
A three-minute video montage captures the most intense moments of the Rob Ford saga.

Remember when Palin said “reload” and put a
gun sight on 20 different politicians? Remember
when one of those politicians was shot in the head?

Remember “blood libel”?

Remember her recent remarks on slavery?

I can see her stupidity from my porch.

CRACKED CORNER:

It Is The Mainstream Media’s Fault That America is Plagued By Sarah Palin

RELIGION CORNER:

America Spends $71 Billion Annually Subsidizing Tax-Exempt Religion

Breaking: Federal District Court
Declares A Religious Income Tax
Exemption Unconstitutional

North Carolina Christian school orders families to sign anti-LGBT ‘Biblical Morality’ pledge

LET’S ALL GO TO THE MOVIES:

‘Bettie Page Reveals All,’
A Close-Up Look at the
Pinup Goddess and Sexual Icon

VIDEO DU JOUR:

The Stuff They Don’t Want You to Know About Nikola Tesla


Headlines Du Jour is a leisure-time activity of National Trufax, a wholly owned and operated subsidiary of Not Now Silly.,
home of the Steam-Powered Word-0-Matic. Updated through the day. Use
our valuable bandwidth to post your news comments in today’s open
thread.

Nostalgia Ain’t What It Used To Be ► The Electrocution of Topsy

Dateline January 4, 1903 – On this day a circus elephant named Topsy was electrocuted to death by The Wizard of Menlo Park, Thomas Edison. The death sentence was carried out, ostensibly, because Topsy had killed 3 trainers in 3 years. However, the real reason for Topsy’s cruel death was commercial.

Trained elephants were a big attraction around the turn of the last century and Topsy had once belonged to the Adam Forepaugh Circus, just one of many traveling circuses working the large and small towns of ‘Merka. Topsy was later retired to Luna Park in Coney Island. However, Topsy wasn’t as well-trained as other elephants of the day and had killed 3 trainers, including the last one who, while drunk, tried to feed a lit cigarette to her. Topsy wasn’t happy and trampled the man to death. Go figure!

Originally Topsy was to be hanged for her crimes. However, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty of Animals stepped in and other methods of putting Topsy to death were contemplated. Thomas Edison won the day with his suggestion that Topsy be electrocuted. Edison’s plan had less to do with killing Topsy humanly, as electrocution was considered to be. At the time Edison was locked into a commercial battle with George Westinghouse which has come to be known as The War of Currents.

The War of the Currents was the Beta vs VHS battle of the day and the prize was the ability to wire ‘Merka for electricity. Edison was pushing the Direct Current [DC] method of electrical distribution and lighting, which required a much lower voltage. Westinghouse was pushing for Alternating Current [AC] because he had licensed the patents to Nicola Tesla‘s competing system. For Tesla hooking up with Westinghouse and competing with Edison was something of a pay-back. Tesla had worked for Edison at one time and told Edison that he could redesign a motor that Edison had created. Reportedly Edison said he’s pay $50,000 to Tesla if he could pull it off. When Tesla did, Edison claimed he was merely joking and the newly emigrated Tesla just didn’t understand ‘Merkin humour. A thousand laughs that Edison.

The real reason Edison wanted to kill Topsy with electricity is that he wanted to demonstrate how dangerous Westinghouse’s AC power was. He had already created a disinformation campaign against AC current. According to the WikiWackyWoo:

Edison carried out a campaign to discourage the use of alternating current, including spreading disinformation on fatal AC accidents, publicly killing animals, and lobbying against the use of AC in state legislatures. Edison directed his technicians, primarily Arthur Kennelly and Harold P. Brown, to preside over several AC-driven killings of animals, primarily stray cats and dogs but also unwanted cattle and horses. Acting on these directives, they were to demonstrate to the press that alternating current was more dangerous than Edison’s system of direct current.[29] He also tried to popularize the term for being electrocuted as being “Westinghoused”. Years after DC had lost the “war of the currents,” in 1903, his film crew made a movie of the electrocution with high voltage AC, supervised by Edison employees, of Topsy, a Coney Island circus elephant which had recently killed three men.

Edison opposed capital punishment, but his desire to disparage the system of alternating current led to the invention of the electric chair. Harold P. Brown, who was being secretly paid by Edison, built the first electric chair for the state of New York to promote the idea that alternating current was deadlier than DC.

Executing Topsy was a two-fer for Thomas Edison. Not only was he able to make another powerful statement against Alternating Current, but he also was able to film the event with his latest invention: the movie camera. His movie “Electrocuting An Elephant” toured around ‘Merka and Edison made money off its distribution and ticket sales.

WARNING: Not for the squeamish! 

BTW: In all likelihood Topsy was named after the character of Topsy in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s famous anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, published in serial format in 1851 – 1852 and in book form in 1853. It’s from the Beecher Stowe book that we get the expression “grows like Topsy” or as Topsy put it, she just “grow’d.”

While looking for pics to illustrate this blog post I came across Topsy: the Electrocuted Elephant, a series of comic strips that make one think, or at least they do me.