I bet you didn't know that this thread would have a part 2

peasant

silly dress... check
silly walk ... check
actual conflict potential ... treble check :eek:

closing ceremony at India/Pakistan border

ArnoldJRimmer

peasant wrote: »

silly dress... check
silly walk ... check
actual conflict potential ... treble check :eek:

closing ceremony at India/Pakistan border

I actually went to this once, it was wonderfully ridiculous. There is a stand on each side of the border for spectators. Gets a big crowd from the India side, not so much from Pakistan. Given the tensions between the two countries, its actually one of the friendlier and respectful ways they express their rivalry

Realt Dearg Sec

peasant wrote: »

silly dress... check
silly walk ... check
actual conflict potential ... treble check :eek:

closing ceremony at India/Pakistan border

This is such a fascinating ceremony to me because it is obviously an expression of real, historical hostilities, and an occasion of the worst kind of chest-thumping jingoisim, and yet it is also highly choreographed and ceremonial, requiring a certain amount of collaboration to carry out. It's pure Monty Python really.

cdeb

Realt Dearg Sec wrote: »

It's pure Monty Python really.

Appropriately enough, both were covered in Michael Palin's travelogues. (Himalaya and Around the World in 80 Days)

Adyx

LostinBlanch wrote: »

In the first series, the most expensive special effect was the doors that opened automatically. The production company had to pay two people to open the doors whenever any actor had to go through them, as they didn't have the technology at the time.

It's amazing how many things we take for granted were first imagined by Gene Rodenberry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9ilm8PEJlQ

Realt Dearg Sec

cdeb wrote: »

Appropriately enough, both were covered in Michael Palin's travelogues. (Himalaya and Around the World in 80 Days)

YES! Was trying to remember where I had seen a good explanation of what was going on. It was Palin.

Capt'n Midnight

You know the way the guards outside Buckingham Palace have to play silent and stiff ?

If one of them shouts "get back from the Queen’s guard" at you consider it a final warning before things get physical




https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-5778bb845825e2e2f67890a3056ec8a2

A police spokesman said the man was given "words of advice"

The secret police of the GDR was formed in 1950 and within ten years about one in 30 East Germans was a Stasi agent. About a third of the population was under close surveillance at any given time. The methods used to control the population were fairly brutal, with the risk of any transgression ending in torture or death. Neighbours were enouraged to inform on each other, and they kept files on every aspect of peoples lives, from their medical histories to their relationships with colleagues so that they could effectively target their weaknesses should they get any ideas. Kids were brainwashed with schools and programs aimed at terrifying them into a lifetime of conformity.

Other divisions specialized in espionage, tracking down defectors and smuggling them back to the GDR to almost certain death, identifying potential defectors, and most divisions relied on information fed back from a vast network of informers willing to cast suspicion on neighbours or family members - the innocent or the simply inconvenient.

Porn was considered the epitome of decaying decadent Western morality, and banned in the GDR. Kind of. The exception was the clutch of 12 porn enthusiasts that grew into a 160 man-strong porn film unit, which produced a dozen films starring enthusiastic (I hope) amateur participants in military scenarios. The actors who participated were generally army civillian employees, and the premieres were attended by military and party bigwigs for whose enjoyment was one of the reasons they had been produced. A perk.

Apparently the official justification for the productions was the possibility of filming someone watching porn with a view to blackmailing them afterwards.

New Home

Candie wrote: »

The secret police of the GDR was formed in 1950 and within ten years about one in 30 East Germans was a Stasi agent. About a third of the population was under close surveillance at any given time. The methods used to control the population were fairly brutal, with the risk of any transgression ending in torture or death. Neighbours were enouraged to inform on each other, and they kept files on every aspect of peoples lives, from their medical histories to their relationships with colleagues so that they could effectively target their weaknesses should they get any ideas. Kids were brainwashed with schools and programs aimed at terrifying them into a lifetime of conformity.

Other divisions specialized in espionage, tracking down defectors and smuggling them back to the GDR to almost certain death, identifying potential defectors, and most divisions relied on information fed back from a vast network of informers willing to cast suspicion on neighbours or family members - the innocent or the simply inconvenient.

Porn was considered the epitome of decaying decadent Western morality, and banned in the GDR. Kind of. The exception was the clutch of 12 porn enthusiasts that grew into a 160 man-strong porn film unit, which produced a dozen films starring enthusiastic (I hope) amateur participants in military scenarios. The actors who participated were generally army civillian employees, and the premieres were attended by military and party bigwigs for whose enjoyment was one of the reasons they had been produced. A perk.

Apparently the official justification for the productions was the possibility of filming someone watching porn with a view to blackmailing them afterwards.

A great film on the Stasi is "The lives of others", well worth watching. No, it's not porn.

New Home

New Home wrote: »

A great film on the Stasi is "The lives of others", well worth watching. No, it's not porn.

Goddamn it, it isn't?!

I've actually seen it.That was a very good movie!

When I first watched Chernobyl it brought it to mind immediately. It captured that same bleak greyness that I associate with the Soviet Bloc, after a lifetime of exposure to that grim portrayal.

KevRossi

Candie wrote: »

The secret police of the GDR was formed in 1950 and within ten years about one in 30 East Germans was a Stasi agent. About a third of the population was under close surveillance at any given time.

Kids were brainwashed with schools and programs aimed at terrifying them into a lifetime of conformity.

Well, this is only partly true. 1 in 30 would have given info to the Stasi at some time, they certainly didn't work for them. Some gave it voluntarily, some were coerced, most fell in between. Most of the '1 in 30' gave info once, on one particular person of interest, be it a work colleague, teacher etc.

Kids were about as 'brainwashed' as we are here. They didn't have access to a lot of West German media, but a lot of the DDR could receive West German TV. Everything in grey in the map below could receive it, the red squares are high powered transmitters. It was illegal to watch it, but everybody did.

East German kids went to the FDJ, a sort of scout movement that ran a huge amount of weekend and holiday camps. My ex-GF is an Ossi, born in the early 70's, I lived in Leipzig for a bit and one of my best mates is from Dresden. I always found that East Germans were more sociable and were better in big groups than West Germans.

No idea about the porn, but they had more sex partners than west Germans, and swinging was a big thing in the DDR, as was nudism (FKK). And statistically their women have more orgasms than west German women.

KevRossi

And if you want to see a very accurate portrayal of East German life, I'd suggest the mini series Deutschland 83.

New Home

And if you want to watch a very quirky, funny, touching film set in 1989, watch "Goodbye Lenin".

Bring back GDR!

The one in 30 comes from the meticulous records; payments and favours were carefully recorded. I don't think most were one-offs, but I'm not an expert.

The porn section (the horn section?) was made public knowledge in 2008, but was set up in 1982 and made 12 movies before the fall in 1989. There's an MDR documentary about it.

peasant

KevRossi wrote: »

They didn't have access to a lot of West German media, but a lot of the DDR could receive West German TV. Everything in grey in the map below could receive it, the red squares are high powered transmitters. It was illegal to watch it, but everybody did.

My relatives lived (and still do) near Dresden.
They couldn't get West-TV.*
In the GDR people called this area: Das Tal der Ahnungslosen (the valley of the clueless)


*well...they couldn't receive it on the rabbits ears in their flat, but that was quickly fixed when the whole block of flats got together and installed a proper aerial in the attic and an improvised cable TV for the whole house as soon as officialdom had given up on actual prosecutions for watching West-TV. It was still illegal, but non-enforcable at that point.

joujoujou

Speaking about East Germany...

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1410281/

Living in a shadow of Berlin Wall from wild rabbits point of view. Worth watching.

Capt'n Midnight

KevRossi wrote: »

They didn't have access to a lot of West German media, but a lot of the DDR could receive West German TV. Everything in grey in the map below could receive it, the red squares are high powered transmitters. It was illegal to watch it, but everybody did.

The Eastern Bloc countries use the French SECAM system for colour TV.

This meant that you could see Western TV, but only in black and white.
It was a compromise. No one had to get illegal TV's but the West looked as drab as the East.

It worked both ways. The GDR show The Sandman Sandmännchen was very popular in the West too.



Very different to Korea where thanks to the South's adoption of loan words and time moving on North Koreans are sometimes subtitled when on TV in the South


Which leads on to the North Korean monster movie Pulgasari when they kidnapped the director from the South and got the Japanese do the effects. It's an anti-monarchy Kaiju.

BaZmO*

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Which leads on to the North Korean monster movie Pulgasari when they kidnapped the director from the South and got the Japanese do the effects. It's an anti-monarchy Kaiju.

I watched a really good documentary on BBC4 about this a few years back.

The abduction of Shin Sang-ok and Choi Eun-hee occurred in North Korea between 1978 and 1986. Shin Sang-ok was a famous South Korean film director married to actress Choi Eun-hee. Together, they established Shin Film and made many films through the 1960s which garnered recognition for South Korea at various film festivals. In 1978 Choi was abducted and taken to North Korea to the country's future dictator Kim Jong-il. The abduction of Shin followed six months later.

After three years in prison, Shin was united with Choi, and the two were instructed by Kim Jong-il to make films for him in order to gain global recognition for North Korea's film industry. After making many films for Kim, in 1986 Choi and Shin escaped from North Korean supervision to a US embassy while in Vienna.

Kim Jong-il was a big movie buff.

New Home

Candie wrote: »

Bring back GDR!

The one in 30 comes from the meticulous records; payments and favours were carefully recorded. I don't think most were one-offs, but I'm not an expert.

The porn section (the horn section?) was made public knowledge in 2008, but was set up in 1982 and made 12 movies before the fall in 1989. There's an MDR documentary about it.

Maybe they tried, but the got it all wrong: they wanted a German Democratic Porn Republic but instead they created GDPR.

ohnonotgmail

Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first president to have an armoured limousine. there were fears of an assassination attempt after Pearl Harbor so they modified his existing limousine. they added armor plating for the doors, bullet-proof tires, inch-thick windows and storage compartments for pistols and sub-machine guns. the car was a convertible and Roosevelt preferred to drive with the top down.

Father Hernandez

Apollo 14 commander Alan Shepard was the first American astronaut in space, but today he's almost as well known as the first -- and so far, only -- person to hit a golf ball on the Moon.

Just before leaving the lunar surface in 1971, he attached a 6-iron golf club head to the foldable shaft of a lunar soil sampler and whacked two golf balls out into the gray lunar distance.

He sliced the first and hit the second about 200 yards.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kionasmith/2019/02/06/astronaut-alan-shepards-out-of-this-world-round-of-golf-on-the-moon/#1c3dadc82500

Wibbs

Bloody golfists. The buggers are everywhere.

In 1966, the birth rate in Japan was much lower than in the years before or after it. This is due to Hinoe Uma ("fire-horse") and it is traditionally believed to recur on a 60 year cycle. It is the belief that children born on those years will be headstrong, and in particular that women born on such years will bring bad luck to their husbands.

Ipso

Father Hernandez wrote: »

Apollo 14 commander Alan Shepard was the first American astronaut in space, but today he's almost as well known as the first -- and so far, only -- person to hit a golf ball on the Moon.

Just before leaving the lunar surface in 1971, he attached a 6-iron golf club head to the foldable shaft of a lunar soil sampler and whacked two golf balls out into the gray lunar distance.

He sliced the first and hit the second about 200 yards.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kionasmith/2019/02/06/astronaut-alan-shepards-out-of-this-world-round-of-golf-on-the-moon/#1c3dadc82500

A good moonwalk spoiled!

mikhail

Deleted User wrote: »

In 1966, the birth rate in Japan was much lower than in the years before or after it. This is due to Hinoe Uma ("fire-horse") and it is traditionally believed to recur on a 60 year cycle. It is the belief that children born on those years will be headstrong, and in particular that women born on such years will bring bad luck to their husbands.

April 1966 must have been a fun month in Japan.

Wibbs

Ipso wrote: »

A good moonwalk spoiled!

ohnonotgmail

Fax machines are so old it is possible that an actual genuine samurai could have used one.

New Home

I've just looked it up, it seems a version of the telefax (more like a telegram-fax) was actually invented before the phone was!! :eek:

Professor Moriarty

New Home wrote: »

I've just looked it up, it seems a version of the telefax (more like a telegram-fax) was actually invented before the phone was!! :eek:

The earliest recorded method of long distance communication was homing pigeons in Egypt in 2,900 BC.

ohnonotgmail

in 2015 and 2018 Nigel richards from New Zealand won the french world scrabble championships. He doesn't speak french.