You might be fan of Eric Schlosser from his stellar reporting in Fast Food Nation and Reefer Madness. If you are, you have another reason to be proud of him—in his new book Command and Control, Schlosser has uncovered a remarkable story about a nuclear annihilation the United States almost inflicted on itself.

That’s right: on January 23, 1961, two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs were accidentally dropped over Goldsboro, North Carolina. The bombs were released after a B-52 bomber broke up in mid-air, and one of the nuclear weapons did exactly what it was supposed to do in a wartime situation: its parachute opened and its trigger mechanisms engaged. In a newly declassified report, a senior engineer familiar with the details of the case stated that “one simple, dynamo-technology, low voltage switch stood between the United States and a major catastrophe.”
 

 
Each bomb carried a payload of 4 megatons – the equivalent of 4 million tons of TNT explosive. Each bomb was 260 times as powerful as the bomb detonated over Hiroshima in 1945. Had the device been triggered, the lethal fallout might well have spread over Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, even New York City – it’s difficult to calculate the number of people that might have been killed, but it could well have numbered into the millions.

Writing eight years after the events, engineer Parker F. Jones named his secret report “Goldsboro Revisited or: How I learned to Mistrust the H-Bomb,” a cute reference to Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 classic black comedy about an accidental nuclear holocaust, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

According to The Guardian (UK), which was the first to report the story on Saturday,

The accident happened when a B-52 bomber got into trouble, having embarked from Seymour Johnson Air Force base in Goldsboro for a routine flight along the East Coast. As it went into a tailspin, the hydrogen bombs it was carrying became separated. One fell into a field near Faro, North Carolina, its parachute draped in the branches of a tree; the other plummeted into a meadow off Big Daddy’s Road.

Jones found that of the four safety mechanisms in the Faro bomb, designed to prevent unintended detonation, three failed to operate properly. When the bomb hit the ground, a firing signal was sent to the nuclear core of the device, and it was only that final, highly vulnerable switch that averted calamity. “The MK 39 Mod 2 bomb did not possess adequate safety for the airborne alert role in the B-52,” Jones concludes.

-snip-

Using freedom of information, he discovered that at least 700 “significant” accidents and incidents involving 1,250 nuclear weapons were recorded between 1950 and 1968 alone.

Well, that’s sobering news. As a little reminder of what almost happened in Goldsboro, North Carolina, here’s the last couple of minutes of Dr. Strangelove:
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Nuclear Explosions Since 1945
Nuclear Bomb slow-motion simulation

Vince Gilligan, in the Breaking Bad writers’ room
 
Sixty-one episodes down, one to go. Breaking Bad is almost at its end, and as we await the sure-to-be-exhilarating final episode next week, we provide a look at the process that generated some of the finest narrative TV of recent memory.

While he was researching his what looks to be outstanding Difficult Men, Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution: From The Sopranos and The Wire to Mad Men and Breaking Bad, writer Brett Martin was given access to the writers’ room as the Breaking Bad brain trust crafted the unforgettable storyline for Season 4. Martin snapped some photographs as well, and here they are for you to see.

Needless to say, if you haven’t watched Breaking Bad Season 4 and don’t want to be spoiled, you should stop reading now.
 

The main plot points for the first four episodes of Season 4, outlined on index cards
 

The detailed throughline for the first episode of Season 4
 

If you’ve seen all of Season 4, then you already know what “BOOM” means, in the season’s final episode. The fascinating thing to notice here, though, is the reference to Walt disposing of something (or someone) in the ocean—has there ever been a shot of Walt near an ocean? The possibilities of what the writers might have been planning are intriguing…..
 
More pictures from the Breaking Bad writers’ room, including the writers’ “reference library” and the Breaking Bad-themed bathroom key after the jump…
 

My favorite, because of that grin. Ruby Taylor, arrested in 1942 in connection with an investigation in connection with prostitution.
 
The romantic idea of American prohibition hinges on the myth of an accessible, safe speakeasy for every soul in need of a booze-enhanced nightlife. In actuality, raids on speakeasies were incredibly common, and although owners often bribed police and city officials, actually finding and patronizing a speakeasy could be a real risk for your average Joe. Lesser known were the vacation drinkers, who would migrate up to Montreal on holiday, as it quickly became known as a friendly city of vice for rambunctious Americans. But Montreal had more than an opportunistic liquor economy to boast of.

Montreal looked and sounded like Europe, from the architecture to the French language and culture, giving one’s debauchery the feel of an exotic vacation. Of course, the bedfellows of alcohol (gambling, organized crime, radical politics, and prostitution) also flourished, in spite of a burgeoning movement to purge the city of sin. While moralistic committees for social reform began to organize in 1918, it was only a year later that prohibition went into effect in the US, completely steamrolling (and subsequently exacerbating), the growing anti-vice sentiment.

By the time alcohol became legal again in the States, Montreal was already a sort of Euro-Reno, famous for its brothels. With a sudden rise in venereal disease, the public sentiment on working girls became particularly hostile, and perception of prostitution went from pitying to vitriolic: no longer were they considered poor girls down on their luck, but pathological hussies, tearing apart the very moral fiber of fair Montreal!

Eventually a a full-scale investigation was launched to weed out the corruption and sever the mob ties and various illegal economies. (By 1953, the Commission of Investigation On Public Morality had thrown many a cop in prison, and Montreal was starting to clean up.) Regardless, the laws regarding prostitution were pretty forgiving. Of course, there were still arrests, the records of which are fascinating.

The photos below are of madams, prostitutes, and brothel managers arrested in attempts at a crackdown. It’s amazing how French the fashions appear to be, from darkly-colored geometric cupid’s bows to the snug sweaters and Edith Piaf eyebrows. Many of them are listed as “arrested in connection with an investigation in connection with prostitution,” which would seem to suggest either a large brothel bust, or the cops hassling an individual prostitute to get information for a larger case. If there’s any emotional theme to these headshots, it’s how unimpressed all the women seem to be with the authority that’s arresting them.
 

Anna Labelle, aka Mme Émile Beauchamp, the most powerful madam in Montreal during the WWII. She would drive to the courthouse in a Cadillac wearing a mink coat. Her clients were often from the same police force that busted her.
 

Annie Parker, arrested in 1941 in connection with an investigation in connection with prostitution.
 

FleuretteDubois, arrested in 1942 for keeping a brothel.
 

Irène Lavallée, arrested in 1940 in connection with an investigation in connection with prostitution.
 

Liliane Brown, aka Ida Katz, arrested either in 1930 or 1940, high level madam.
 

Mary Shepperd, arrested in 1940 as part of an investigation in connection with prostitution.
 
Via Archives de la Ville de Montréal

 
Dr. Benjamin Spock is best-known for writing the baby bible, The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care. A drastic departure from the parenting techniques du jour, Spock opposed the strict schedule and limited affection espoused by prior child experts. He promoted such crazy techniques as “cuddle your baby,” “feed it when it’s hungry,” and “let it sleep when it’s tired,” all with a friendly, nonjudgmental tone. His primary advice for parents was, “Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.”

Spock was actually the first pediatrician also trained in psychology, and of course, countless medical doctors and psychologists have confirmed his infant-centered parenting over the years. In fact, that’s why people no longer try and toilet-train 3-month-olds with suppositories. Seriously, it was common practice to attempt to toilet train three-month-old babies, and in the 30’s, it was even recommended that suppositories be used to regulate infant bowels. I can’t imagine a more agonizing Sisyphean futility than dangling an infant over the toilet (I assume you’d have to dangle them), but suppositories for a baby sounds nightmarish.

Despite Spock’s groundbreaking work, his critics often insisted that his methods were too soft, and instilled no discipline in babies, who would never become diligent and upstanding citizens without proper baby-molding. This was certainly exacerbated by Spock’s outspoken radical politics.

Joining SANE (The Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy) in 1962, Spock was a dedicated anti-war activist from the start. After both a statement of support and a very public donation to draft-resistors, he was convicted of conspiracy to counsel, aid, and abet resistance to the draft in 1968. (He was sentenced to two years in prison, but it was overturned in appeals.)

Spock also marched with Martin Luther King, and many activists encouraged him to run as King’s Vice-Presidential running-mate, though neither had any interest in the presidency at the time. That changed in 1972, however, when Spock ran for POTUS on The People’s Party ticket; his platform positions included a guaranteed living wage, socialized health care, and the repeal of laws restricting abortion, homosexuality, and marijuana use.

Dr. Spock actually completely embraced the politicization of his parenting philosophy, and even published a book, Spock on Vietnam with the referential image of a Vietnamese toddler on the cover.
 

Protesting the war with Dr. Spock. This event was co-sponsored with the New York Council for a SANE Nuclear Policy, Women Strike for Peace, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and the Student Peace Union
 
What’s more, while he was adamant that his baby book be regularly revised (acknowledging that he didn’t have all the answers, and he had made mistakes) Dr. Spock never budged from his political principles. From his 1994 book, Rebuilding American Family Values: A Better World for Our Children:

The Permissive Label: A couple weeks after my indictment [for ‘conspiracy to counsel, aid and abet resistance to the military draft’], I was accused by Reverend Norman Vincent Peale, a well-known clergyman and author who supported the Vietnam War, of corrupting an entire generation. In a sermon widely reported in the press, Reverend Peale blamed me for all the lack of patriotism, lack of responsibility, and lack of discipline of the young people who opposed the war. All these failings, he said, were due to my having told their parents to give them “instant gratification” as babies. I was showered with blame in dozens of editorials and columns from primarily conservative newspapers all over the country heartily agreeing with Peale’s assertions.

While the baby-boomers of late seem to be under the impression that millenials are entitled little pansies raised by helicopter parents, it behooves us to get some historical perspective and remember that every generation is under the impression that they’re the last of the rugged cowboys.

Here’s Spock addressing his legal charges, careful to avoid incriminating himself or admitting guilt, ending his statement with a shout-out to the kids.
 

 
There’s clearly some sort of secret propaganda campaign underway, intended to portray Brooklyn as nothing more than a tub of wealthy, cosmopolitan, white hipster kids with dumb taste. That has to be it, because some dude is selling little boxes of rocks (or gravel, really, let’s be honest), as “pieces of Brooklyn,” and I can’t imagine why some one would do such a thing without suspecting conspiracy and/or foul play. This is the tactic of a vacation beach town, where the locals sell bottles of sand as souvenirs, host wet t-shirt contests, and margaritas are poured into your mouth by girls named “Amber” (thanks, mom!).

Entrepreneur Floyd Hayes, however, thinks it’s is a bully idea for our little hamlet, as well! Selling each… box, for four dollars, Hayes manages to make you not totally hate him by giving a dollar of proceeds to the Brooklyn Arts Council. Years in non-profit actually taught me that people are more likely to donate small amounts of money if they get some swag in return, but come on, Floyd! This isn’t a serious philanthropic venture, and we both know it!

A man claiming to be Floyd has popped up in the comment section of Brokelyn, saying:

Thanks for the post. I think you have a fair angle. I’ve sold 20 of them now, to 11 customers. I’ve emailed them all to say thanks and had some good responses back. One guy bought 10 – told me it was a super cheap xmas gift for his family who are spread out all over the states. Another customer is based in Ohio, she used to live in Brooklyn and wanted something to put on her desk to remind her of good times. A Canadian and a Parisian also bought some, thinking it was “just funny.” I guess people have their reasons, I don’t think it’s a case of “a fool and their money.” As long as people get some sense of enjoyment from it then I’m happy really.

Floyd! I don’t wanna knock a good hustle, but you are killing me! I know you can’t send bed bugs or police brutality through the mail, but you could at least throw in some artisanal dirt! This is Brooklyn, dammit!
 
Via Brokelyn

 
According to the Los Angeles Times, Cassidy Lynn Campbell, a 16-year-old trans girl who attends Marina High School in Huntington Beach, was elected its 2013 homecoming queen. Campbell won the title on Friday night. When her win was announced at the football game’s halftime show, students in the bleachers chanted, “Cassidy! Cassidy!” and a numner of her friends rushed the stage to wrap her in a group hug.

Before the game started, Cassidy Campbell told the media assembled for the event that she wanted to make a statement:

“If I win it would mean that the school recognizes me as the gender I always felt I was. But with all the attention, I realized it’s bigger than me. I’m doing this for the kids who can’t be themselves.”

“She was stunned. She kind of broke down on the podium,” school district spokesperson Tom Delapp told the LAT. “She was shocked. She cried a lot.”

Cassidy told reporters after the ceremony:

“I was so proud to win, not just for me but for everyone out there, I think it really shows the progression of the times.”

Yes, it most certainly does!
 

 
We don’t really think of midcentury China as having a space-age or Jetsons mentality, but these remarkable magazine covers from 1961 and 1962 clearly prove that premise wrong. “Kexue Dazhong” does mean “popular science,” so this is effectively the Popular Science of China.

On this page I found the following text (after having Google Translate masticate it for a few nanoseconds):
 

1960s, the Soviet Union and China against each other, the withdrawal of scientific and technological personnel, China to promote technological self-reliance campaign on “science and technology development is the practice of a better tomorrow.

 
Well, maybe Google Translate wasn’t so much help after all in this instance. There seems to be some emphasis on competition between the USSR and the People’s Republic of China and “self-reliance,” and yet the “9/1962” cover image below depicts a smiling Russian cosmonaut. So I don’t know what’s going on there.

The page did have the benefit of mentioning the American source book for the image above: Scott Minick and Jiao Ping’s Chinese Graphic Design in the Twentieth Century (1990).
 

 

 

 

 
via Include Me Out

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Mao say funk: hot go-go action from China and Hong Kong
Eating dogs in space: the Chinese astronaut diet

In February Marianne Faithfull discussed her thirteen favorite albums with The Quietus’ Joel McIver. Her list was eclectic: folk, jazz, rock, blues, and country, including Dolly Parton’s The Fairest of Them All, The Band’s The Band, and Johnny Cash’s American IV.

In her description of Jack White’s Blunderbuss Marianne said:

I love everything about Americana, which is why you’ve got albums by The Band and Dolly Parton on this list, and I work it myself. Would I go that route myself? Well, I think doing a whole country album wouldn’t suit me. It wouldn’t be Marianne Faithfull.

Except that she kind of did one.

In the mid-‘70s Marianne recorded the country song “Dreamin’ My Dreams,” written by Allen Reynolds and made famous by Waylon Jennings in 1975. The success of this song inspired her to record a country album with members of The Grease Band. Although she had recorded an album’s worth of songs with producer Mike Leander in 1971, they were rejected by Bell Records and not released until 1985, on Rich Kid Blues. So in 1976 Marianne hadn’t had a new release on the market since 1967’s Love in a Mist. A lot had happened in the interim, not the least of which were health problems, drug addiction, eight months in rehab, and disastrous personal relationships. Dreamin’ My Dreams was to be a comeback album and because of this opportunity she began writing songs again, something she hadn’t done in years.

Marianne wrote in her autobiography, Faithfull:

The first incarnation of the New Marianne was a sort of country-western Marlene Dietrich on “Dreaming My Dreams.” Marlene singing torch songs at the Dodge City Saloon. Probably my German blood coming through… “Dreaming My Dreams” is Middle European weltschmerz and country melancholy; a swooning country ballad in waltz time. Perfect, dribbling piano music for crying in your beer. (The band used to call it “Creaming My Jeans.”) I wanted to have a lingering, smoky quality as if time was suspended while you listened to it.

-snip-

“Dreaming My Dreams” was released in Britain to a resounding silence. And then, out of the blue, a deejay in Ireland by the name of Patrick Kenny started to play it on his show and it went to number one on the Irish charts for seven weeks. (The Irish love a waltz.) Okay, it was a fluke, but it gave me hope. Getting on the charts was a kind of forgiveness. We don’t care what you did, we like it anyway. I don’t know whether it’s the Church in Ireland or the drinking, but these people do know how to forgive.

Now I had a chance to make an album and what I wanted was to do a country album. At the cottage I’d been listening not only to James Brown and Otis Redding but also to an awful lot of Hank Williams and Jimmy Rodgers. During the sixties everyone had been trying to emulate black music, but I had now begun to wonder what white blues would be. I came to the conclusion that it would sound like Hank Williams. After that revelation I felt I wanted to do a new kind of country album, not imitating Waylon or Willy and not recorded in Nashville or Austin but done in England, a sort of country roots album with Celtic vibes. I’ve got loads of old Druidic longing and melancholy in my bones, on account of my Welsh blood.

When I began making Faithless this was my plan: an English country album. It would have been an interesting experiment to come at country music from such an elliptical angle, and it would have worked. I still plan to make that album someday, because Faithless certainly wasn’t it. Faithless wasn’t exactly what NEMS had in mind. I found myself in the compromising position of having to include a lot of material on the album because they were songs NEMS happened to publish in Europe. Typical music-biz crap.

NEMS re-packaged all the tracks from Dreamin’ My Dreams with four new country songs – “Wait for Me Down by the River,” “That Was the Day (Coke Came to Nashville),” Dylan’s “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight,” and a cover of the Kitty Wells classic “(It Wasn’t God Who Made) Honky-Tonk Angels”— and released it as Faithless in 1978. She called this move “yet another seamy bit of NEMS monkey business.”

She might not have made an entire album of the English country music she envisioned (I once heard someone describe Lindisfarne’s music that way), but the sampling of songs she did record succeed in conveying that feeling. After all, “Lady Madelaine” is about her friend Madeleine D’Arcy, the doomed lover of “Spanish Tony,” The Rolling Stones’ friend and drug dealer (also mentioned in the song), and “That Was the Day (Coke Came to Nashville)” must be the only country song referencing the M1 motorway.

Marianne performing “Dreaming My Dreams” on Supersonic, circa 1976, below:

 
Arguably experimental filmmaker/pioneering AIDS activist/general genius Derek Jarman’s best known feature length work (one could easily make a good case for Caravaggio), Jubilee transports Queen Elizabeth I (Jenny Runacre, The Passenger) 400 years into the future via the machinations of John Dee, played here by Rocky Horror creator Richard O’Brien - fittingly enough as he’s the one who taught us to do the Time Warp, after all - into a mid-‘70s Britain steeped in punk nihilism.

Naturally, hijinx ensue. Weird, meandering hijinx.

Jordan in her pearls and cashmere cardigan

Era underground icons like Toyah Wilcox, Wayne County, Adam Ant, mime artist Lindsay Kemp, Jordan (AKA Pamela Rooke, one-time shop assistant at Malcolm McClaren and Vivienne Westwood’s SEX boutique and briefly Adam Ant’s manager), The Slits and O’Brien’s former Rocky Horror colleague “Little” Nell Campbell serve in the cast, and the soundtrack features most of the foregoing, plus Siouxsie and The Banshees and Brian Eno. The film has had a typically fantastic Criterion release, and as such, it’s available for viewing on HuluPlus. Or, if you like, just watch it here, thoughtfully subtitled en español. Or maybe it’s Portugese, what do I know?
 

A distinctly unglamorous Toyah
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:

Original Photo-spread for Derek Jarman’s ‘Jubilee’

 
Imagine one of those annoying TV commercials for The Villages retirement community in Florida… but with fit, active, happy-looking, well-groomed, silver fox gay and lesbian couples frolicking in the sunshine, on golf courses, tennis courts, boats, and beaches.

The U.K.-based Villages Group (not connected to The Villages in Florida), has planned the world’s first LGBT-friendly retirement community, Le Village – Canal du Midi, in the South of France in Salleles-d’Aude near Narbonne. They received official permission to build a generic £20 million gated community of 107 eco-friendly homes for seniors this year, with a hotel, restaurant, bar, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, golf, saunas, gym, jacuzzis, tennis courts, housekeeping service, and concierge. That development didn’t receive much initial interest, thanks to the lackluster real estate market…that is, until the company added rainbow flags to the marketing literature and wording specifically targeting the British and French LGBT communities.

Then the inquiries started flooding in at thousands of e-mails a day.

It’s illegal in France to market solely to a particular sexual orientation, so the company was quick to point out that heterosexuals are welcome in the village. (This would make Le Village one of the few places where one could boast about being “the only straight in the village,” a la Little Britain).

The town’s mayor, Yves Bastie, who only learned about the change in marketing after the construction was approved, said he was “flabbergasted” and was worried the effect Le Village would have on the image of the town. On the other side, the secretary of the Association of Retired Gays (l’association Les Gais Retraités) disapproves of the idea of LGBT’s self-segregating. “Gays must fit into society and not go it alone.”

The outrage following France’s legalization of gay marriage this year and the fact that anyone is surprised by this brilliant marketing plan shows how deeply ingrained homophobia still is. And perfectly illustrates why an aging LGBT couple would want to choose such a place to retire.

Or, should I say, a rather wealthy retired LGBT couple: the house prices start at €236,000 (about $320,000), not including €70 ($95) weekly service charges.

The Villages Group’s promotional video for its “rainbow village,” below: