Wednesday, October 21, 2020
Sunday, October 13, 2019
Today, October 13, 2019, I uploaded three copies of my old radio show from the 1960's, The Sunday Session. It ran on WHEE Radio, an AM daytime-only radio station located in Martinsville, Virginia for about six years.
The show began, I believe, around June 1962 as "The Sunday Session of Wheetime" which I shortened to just "The Sunday Session". The program continued until June 1968 when the final broadcast aired.
The longest and probably the best of these shows ran on December 26, 1965 from 1:45 PM until 5:00 PM. I also uploaded two other copies of the program that were recorded in June 1965 and my final show that was recorded in June 1968.
I recorded the program in the WHEE studios on Franklin Street in Martinsville using one of the station's two Ampex 601 reel-to-reel recorders and Scotch brand 1/4-inch recording tape that I purchased from Wendy at The Music Bar, a local record store, in Martinsville. I purchased the "triple-length" version which is extremely thin and tends to stretch if you're not careful. That's why there may be a few spots missing out of the show when I accidentally got the tape wrapped around the pinch roller. Sorry!
The musical selections on these uploads have been "telescoped" out (removed) to avoid copyright issues with YouTube. I uploaded earlier versions to YouTube several months ago and finally took them down because of all the copyright problems. However, the rest of the recordings contain all of the musical intros and exits, commercials, and in most cases, the on-the-hour news broadcasts recorded in the program.
Radio Station WHEE was the brainchild of my father, John W. ("Johnny") Shultz, former Mayor of Martinsville. He, along with his close friend, Phillip E. Hedrick, who at the time was the chief engineer of Radio Station WSJS in Winston-Salem, NC, decided to go into partnership and open the station in 1954. WHEE would be in direct competition with the only other radio station in Martinsville, WMVA, which my father had managed since 1942. My dad would run the business operations of WHEE while Phil would take care of all the engineering details and the FCC licensing requirements.
In the 1920s when my father was young, he wanted to join the circus. He was very popular, talented and outgoing. Everyone who knew Johnny Shultz loved him.
In 1938. television was just being invented and radio was king of the airwaves. New stations were blossoming everywhere, in nearly every city and town in America. In Salisbury, North Carolina, my dad was called on to take the reins as the first manager of Radio Station WSTP when it went on the air in December of that year.
Two years later, I was born in Salisbury, NC, at Rowan Memorial Hospital. Two years after that in 1942, our family moved to my dad's birthplace of Martinsville, Virginia, where he had been hired to become the first station manager of Radio Station WMVA which had gone on the air in Martinsville less than a year earlier.
I grew up in Martinsville. One of the announcers at WMVA, Paul Zimmerman also had a band that played at many local functions. My father hired Paul to teach me how to play the piano. I wasn't very good at it, but they put me on the radio anyway. Paul's wife, Barbara Harding, ran a local talent show on WMVA and I played the only tune I had memorized, "Country Gardens", on Barbara's radio show. It was my first time being on the air. I was 8 or 9 years old at the time.
In 1954, my dad left WMVA and he and Phil started up WHEE, a new radio station in direct competition with WMVA in Martinsville. Several months later, he asked me if I would like to have my own radio show on the station. I agreed to do it and, at the tender age of 15, I created "Tops for Teens". My voice had not matured yet and it was not much of anything to remember, but it was my first radio program and the show ran for several months on Sunday afternoons.
In the fall of 1959, I left to attend Wake Forest College in Winston-Salem, NC. I did a little announcing at WFDD, the school's FM radio station. One day, another student announcer at WFDD asked me to drive him to WTOB to audition for a part-time job since I had a car and he didn't. WTOB was the local top-40 radio station in the local market and very popular with young adults. When we got to the station, I decided on a whim to ask if I could audition for the job too. Unfortunately for my friend, the station liked me better and hired me instead. I had hit the big time.
I loved working at WTOB. The station played the top hits of the day and was rated #1 in the local market. I marveled at their cutting-edge production techniques, tight delivery, and state-of-the-art production equipment.
One day while I was working my Sunday morning shift, they wheeled in two brand new Collins tape cartridge machines. These were the latest state-of-the-art machines that played tape cartridges that looked similar to commercial 8-track cartridges but were designed especially for radio use. These machines were gargantuan in size, about 3 feet high and nearly as wide. And, in the center of the face of the machine, there was a tiny rectangular slot where a cartridge could be inserted. A green button set the cartridge in motion and a red button made it stop.
Tape cartridge machines were an enormous revelation to radio. Before this, all of the commercials and promotional cuts at WTOB had been recorded on vinyl disks using a 78-rpm lathe cutting machine in a separate studio next to the control room. 78 recordings were immediately abandoned by the industry and tape cartridges became the standard method for playing commercials and promotional cuts. They were a boon to radio stations around the world and enabled them to create multi-faceted sounds for a generation of fast-paced radio production.
When I left the station, I took some of the old WTOB 78 records with me since they were no longer needed by the station and were destined for the trashcan. I'll upload them later here on YouTube when there's time to organize them properly.
After my father died, in 1962 I moved back to Martinsville and began working at the radio station. I was uncomfortable (actually horrified) with the way the station sounded and wanted to make changes. Radical changes. Small-town radio to me was backward, boring, and a waste of the airwaves. My eyes had been opened by working at WTOB. I wanted my station, WHEE, to sound creative, imaginative, and exciting.
But management said no. In retrospect, they were probably right, at least for a small-market radio station like WHEE with barely 50,000 population in the entire county. The station was making money with its current format. Changing it would have been risky at best. I settled on doing my own show. Naturally, it needed to run on Sunday afternoons, and The Sunday Session was born.
Thankfully, tape cartridge machines had matured over the previous few years. By the early 60s, the machines had become much smaller, compact, and much more affordable. Instead of Collins, Tapecaster and Spotmaster were the brands to buy. Radio stations around the world began to use these machines exclusively to play commercials and promotions easily with just the push of a button.
I built The Sunday Session from scratch. With the aid of the station's new Spotmaster tape cartridge machines, I made my own promotional cuts and show intros, and was really proud of how nicely they came out. I went through my own record library from home to find background music that brightened and enhanced the sounds of the show to make it more exciting, just like WTOB, if not even better. I came up with the sound of a gunshot as a time signature, and I used parts of the station's promotional recordings to create special sound bites to use only for the show.
The two tape cartridge machines in the WHEE control room weren't enough for me to create all the complex sounds I wanted to use with The Sunday Session, so when I set up to do the show, I unhooked in the two other machines that were in the second studio and hooked them up to the main console. Now I had four tape cartridge machines that all ran together to create all the special sounds of The Sunday Session.
For the next few years, I made it my mission to continually tweak and massage the show every week to make it sound the best possible. I took requests for tunes to play and, when a couple of listeners came by the station and offered their help in answering the phone, I agreed. Thank you, Alvin Jamison. And your friend, the girl, I forget her name now. They helped enormously by running into the main studio with requests that had come in over the phone from listeners requesting their favorite songs. The Sunday Session was a labor of love. I did my best to make the show exciting and enjoyable to my listeners.
I must mention here that I'm very proud of the three young men who credit me with helping them decide to make radio their profession. My hat's off to my close and dear friend, Barry Michaels, who blew me away when I met him in 1983 at the Winter Park Mall where he was doing a remote broadcast for WBJW in Orlando. These recordings would not be on YouTube without Barry's gentle urging. Check out Barry's website when you have a chance at https://www.thebarrymichaels.com/.
Thanks also to Reggie Campbell, who also went into the business, and, of course, to my dearly departed friend, Hank Hedgecock, who went on from WHEE to several stations around the country before finally settling in Richmond, VA on a couple of stations there. A special thanks also to Hank's brother, my dear friend, Sam Hedgecock, for having the presence of mind to take most of the pictures that appear on the Sunday Session CD's and the images that accompany these YouTube recordings.
You can listen to these shows at the following YouTube locations:
The June, 1965 show is at https://youtu.be/wsaB9AjI688.
The December 26, 1965 show is at https://youtu.be/oBcyWs_iiMY.
The final December, 1968 show is at https://youtu.be/0G3OJlOKjOA.
I sincerely hope you enjoy listening to these sounds from my radio show, The Sunday Session, from more than five decades ago.
Thank you for listening!
Rick Shultz
Santiago, Panama
October, 2019
You will find another copy of this page at the special Blogspot location, https://sunday-session.blogspot.com/
In December, 2019, John Franck, the webmaaster for Mavahi.com, the more-or-less official website of alumni from Martinsville High School, agreed to run some news about the YouTube shows. Thanks, John! Check the site out at www.mavahi.com.
The show began, I believe, around June 1962 as "The Sunday Session of Wheetime" which I shortened to just "The Sunday Session". The program continued until June 1968 when the final broadcast aired.
The longest and probably the best of these shows ran on December 26, 1965 from 1:45 PM until 5:00 PM. I also uploaded two other copies of the program that were recorded in June 1965 and my final show that was recorded in June 1968.
I recorded the program in the WHEE studios on Franklin Street in Martinsville using one of the station's two Ampex 601 reel-to-reel recorders and Scotch brand 1/4-inch recording tape that I purchased from Wendy at The Music Bar, a local record store, in Martinsville. I purchased the "triple-length" version which is extremely thin and tends to stretch if you're not careful. That's why there may be a few spots missing out of the show when I accidentally got the tape wrapped around the pinch roller. Sorry!
The musical selections on these uploads have been "telescoped" out (removed) to avoid copyright issues with YouTube. I uploaded earlier versions to YouTube several months ago and finally took them down because of all the copyright problems. However, the rest of the recordings contain all of the musical intros and exits, commercials, and in most cases, the on-the-hour news broadcasts recorded in the program.
Radio Station WHEE was the brainchild of my father, John W. ("Johnny") Shultz, former Mayor of Martinsville. He, along with his close friend, Phillip E. Hedrick, who at the time was the chief engineer of Radio Station WSJS in Winston-Salem, NC, decided to go into partnership and open the station in 1954. WHEE would be in direct competition with the only other radio station in Martinsville, WMVA, which my father had managed since 1942. My dad would run the business operations of WHEE while Phil would take care of all the engineering details and the FCC licensing requirements.
In the 1920s when my father was young, he wanted to join the circus. He was very popular, talented and outgoing. Everyone who knew Johnny Shultz loved him.
In 1938. television was just being invented and radio was king of the airwaves. New stations were blossoming everywhere, in nearly every city and town in America. In Salisbury, North Carolina, my dad was called on to take the reins as the first manager of Radio Station WSTP when it went on the air in December of that year.
Two years later, I was born in Salisbury, NC, at Rowan Memorial Hospital. Two years after that in 1942, our family moved to my dad's birthplace of Martinsville, Virginia, where he had been hired to become the first station manager of Radio Station WMVA which had gone on the air in Martinsville less than a year earlier.
I grew up in Martinsville. One of the announcers at WMVA, Paul Zimmerman also had a band that played at many local functions. My father hired Paul to teach me how to play the piano. I wasn't very good at it, but they put me on the radio anyway. Paul's wife, Barbara Harding, ran a local talent show on WMVA and I played the only tune I had memorized, "Country Gardens", on Barbara's radio show. It was my first time being on the air. I was 8 or 9 years old at the time.
In 1954, my dad left WMVA and he and Phil started up WHEE, a new radio station in direct competition with WMVA in Martinsville. Several months later, he asked me if I would like to have my own radio show on the station. I agreed to do it and, at the tender age of 15, I created "Tops for Teens". My voice had not matured yet and it was not much of anything to remember, but it was my first radio program and the show ran for several months on Sunday afternoons.
In the fall of 1959, I left to attend Wake Forest College in Winston-Salem, NC. I did a little announcing at WFDD, the school's FM radio station. One day, another student announcer at WFDD asked me to drive him to WTOB to audition for a part-time job since I had a car and he didn't. WTOB was the local top-40 radio station in the local market and very popular with young adults. When we got to the station, I decided on a whim to ask if I could audition for the job too. Unfortunately for my friend, the station liked me better and hired me instead. I had hit the big time.
I loved working at WTOB. The station played the top hits of the day and was rated #1 in the local market. I marveled at their cutting-edge production techniques, tight delivery, and state-of-the-art production equipment.
One day while I was working my Sunday morning shift, they wheeled in two brand new Collins tape cartridge machines. These were the latest state-of-the-art machines that played tape cartridges that looked similar to commercial 8-track cartridges but were designed especially for radio use. These machines were gargantuan in size, about 3 feet high and nearly as wide. And, in the center of the face of the machine, there was a tiny rectangular slot where a cartridge could be inserted. A green button set the cartridge in motion and a red button made it stop.
Tape cartridge machines were an enormous revelation to radio. Before this, all of the commercials and promotional cuts at WTOB had been recorded on vinyl disks using a 78-rpm lathe cutting machine in a separate studio next to the control room. 78 recordings were immediately abandoned by the industry and tape cartridges became the standard method for playing commercials and promotional cuts. They were a boon to radio stations around the world and enabled them to create multi-faceted sounds for a generation of fast-paced radio production.
When I left the station, I took some of the old WTOB 78 records with me since they were no longer needed by the station and were destined for the trashcan. I'll upload them later here on YouTube when there's time to organize them properly.
After my father died, in 1962 I moved back to Martinsville and began working at the radio station. I was uncomfortable (actually horrified) with the way the station sounded and wanted to make changes. Radical changes. Small-town radio to me was backward, boring, and a waste of the airwaves. My eyes had been opened by working at WTOB. I wanted my station, WHEE, to sound creative, imaginative, and exciting.
But management said no. In retrospect, they were probably right, at least for a small-market radio station like WHEE with barely 50,000 population in the entire county. The station was making money with its current format. Changing it would have been risky at best. I settled on doing my own show. Naturally, it needed to run on Sunday afternoons, and The Sunday Session was born.
Thankfully, tape cartridge machines had matured over the previous few years. By the early 60s, the machines had become much smaller, compact, and much more affordable. Instead of Collins, Tapecaster and Spotmaster were the brands to buy. Radio stations around the world began to use these machines exclusively to play commercials and promotions easily with just the push of a button.
I built The Sunday Session from scratch. With the aid of the station's new Spotmaster tape cartridge machines, I made my own promotional cuts and show intros, and was really proud of how nicely they came out. I went through my own record library from home to find background music that brightened and enhanced the sounds of the show to make it more exciting, just like WTOB, if not even better. I came up with the sound of a gunshot as a time signature, and I used parts of the station's promotional recordings to create special sound bites to use only for the show.
The two tape cartridge machines in the WHEE control room weren't enough for me to create all the complex sounds I wanted to use with The Sunday Session, so when I set up to do the show, I unhooked in the two other machines that were in the second studio and hooked them up to the main console. Now I had four tape cartridge machines that all ran together to create all the special sounds of The Sunday Session.
For the next few years, I made it my mission to continually tweak and massage the show every week to make it sound the best possible. I took requests for tunes to play and, when a couple of listeners came by the station and offered their help in answering the phone, I agreed. Thank you, Alvin Jamison. And your friend, the girl, I forget her name now. They helped enormously by running into the main studio with requests that had come in over the phone from listeners requesting their favorite songs. The Sunday Session was a labor of love. I did my best to make the show exciting and enjoyable to my listeners.
I must mention here that I'm very proud of the three young men who credit me with helping them decide to make radio their profession. My hat's off to my close and dear friend, Barry Michaels, who blew me away when I met him in 1983 at the Winter Park Mall where he was doing a remote broadcast for WBJW in Orlando. These recordings would not be on YouTube without Barry's gentle urging. Check out Barry's website when you have a chance at https://www.thebarrymichaels.com/.
Thanks also to Reggie Campbell, who also went into the business, and, of course, to my dearly departed friend, Hank Hedgecock, who went on from WHEE to several stations around the country before finally settling in Richmond, VA on a couple of stations there. A special thanks also to Hank's brother, my dear friend, Sam Hedgecock, for having the presence of mind to take most of the pictures that appear on the Sunday Session CD's and the images that accompany these YouTube recordings.
You can listen to these shows at the following YouTube locations:
The June, 1965 show is at https://youtu.be/wsaB9AjI688.
The December 26, 1965 show is at https://youtu.be/oBcyWs_iiMY.
The final December, 1968 show is at https://youtu.be/0G3OJlOKjOA.
I sincerely hope you enjoy listening to these sounds from my radio show, The Sunday Session, from more than five decades ago.
Thank you for listening!
Rick Shultz
Santiago, Panama
October, 2019
You will find another copy of this page at the special Blogspot location, https://sunday-session.blogspot.com/
In December, 2019, John Franck, the webmaaster for Mavahi.com, the more-or-less official website of alumni from Martinsville High School, agreed to run some news about the YouTube shows. Thanks, John! Check the site out at www.mavahi.com.
Friday, June 22, 2018
A special note about and for my grandkids, Elena, Devin and Drew, who I hope will be visiting this blog at sometime in the future. If you've just found me on this blog, I'm very happy! Please, your individual blog is also nearby, so ...
Elena, please go to https://elenashultz.blogspot.com/
Devin please go to https://devinshultz.blogspot.com/; and
Drew please go to https://andrewshultz.blogspot.com/.
Yeah, I know that they all pretty much say the same thing, but I wasn't comfortable writing you en masse in a single blog and wanted to make it more personal. I thought it was better to make each of you individual blogs, even if they each say almost the same thing, at least right now.
Please write me before I die!
panama.rick@ymail.com or rickinpanama@gmail.com
Much love from your grandfather!
【ツ】
Elena, please go to https://elenashultz.blogspot.com/
Devin please go to https://devinshultz.blogspot.com/; and
Drew please go to https://andrewshultz.blogspot.com/.
Yeah, I know that they all pretty much say the same thing, but I wasn't comfortable writing you en masse in a single blog and wanted to make it more personal. I thought it was better to make each of you individual blogs, even if they each say almost the same thing, at least right now.
Please write me before I die!
panama.rick@ymail.com or rickinpanama@gmail.com
Much love from your grandfather!
【ツ】
Saturday, July 1, 2017
Sony to Begin Producing Vinyl Records Again
Now, vinyl record sales are skyrocketing! According to Time Magazine, over 9.2 million records were sold in 2014. Then the number jumped to nearly 12 million in 2015, which was the highest sales total since 1988. Now, this past year, sales of vinyl records were actually higher than CD's for at least one month in Britain.
Sony has announced that they have "found" a cutting lathe for its Tokyo studios so they can produce master discs which are needed to manufacture vinyl records. In the U.S., NPR has reported that there are only about 16 operating presses still remaining in the country. Most of them are now overloaded with the new demand.
According to the BBC, Sony is now faced with a problem of being able to find engineers who are still alive who remember how the manufacturing process works to create vinyl records in the first place. Holy Cow! Who would have thought this would happen after CD's came along?
Thanks very much for taking the time to read my blog! If you enjoy reading these articles, please take a second to CLICK on a few of the ads that are on here alongside them. It will only take a second and would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks again! ;-}
Saturday, May 27, 2017
$500 Million Poppy Field Accidentally Discovered in N.C.
Talk about bad luck, this happened last week in Catawba County, North Carolina, and boy, the guy who was arrested must feel stupid as you-know-what.
Sheriff's Office deputies got a phone tip last week about an unrelated charge and knocked on the door of Mr. Cody Xiong. Xiong opened the door and thought the deputies were there about the illegal plants in his back yard, so he said, "I guess you're here for the opium?"
When authorities walked to Xiong's back yard, they discovered around 2,000 plants with an estimated value of about $500 million. The actual value will depend on how much the plants actually weigh. When processed, the opium is usually turned into morphine or heroin.
Opium plants are quite illegal to grow in the U.S. and most other countries. The field was about an acre in size and is located near Claremont, a Catawba County town located about 40 miles north of Charlotte. Claremont has a population of about 1,300 people.
Xiong, 37, is also suspected of being involved in a cockfighting operation. The deputies found quite a number of chickens around the home with unusual wounds. A total of eighty chickens were confiscated.
Xiong was charged with manufacturing a Schedule II drug and trafficking in opium. He has been released on $45,000 bail.
Sheriff's Office deputies got a phone tip last week about an unrelated charge and knocked on the door of Mr. Cody Xiong. Xiong opened the door and thought the deputies were there about the illegal plants in his back yard, so he said, "I guess you're here for the opium?"
When authorities walked to Xiong's back yard, they discovered around 2,000 plants with an estimated value of about $500 million. The actual value will depend on how much the plants actually weigh. When processed, the opium is usually turned into morphine or heroin.
Opium plants are quite illegal to grow in the U.S. and most other countries. The field was about an acre in size and is located near Claremont, a Catawba County town located about 40 miles north of Charlotte. Claremont has a population of about 1,300 people.
Xiong, 37, is also suspected of being involved in a cockfighting operation. The deputies found quite a number of chickens around the home with unusual wounds. A total of eighty chickens were confiscated.
Xiong was charged with manufacturing a Schedule II drug and trafficking in opium. He has been released on $45,000 bail.
Thursday, March 30, 2017
Activist Wants To Publish Politicians' Browsing Histories
Last Tuesday our beloved U.S. House of Representatives proposed legislation to wipe out the landmark online privacy protections that were approved by the FCC during the final days of the Obama administration. The Senate voted the same way last week. Now the resolution goes to President Trump's desk for his signature. The White House has said that it "strongly supports" the repeal.
The rules, which had actually not yet gone into effect, would require Internet service providers to get your permission before they can collect and share your personal data. You did know that your service provider has data on everything you do on the Internet, including your browsing history, application use and even your satellite location, right? And they would also have been required to notify you about whatever types of information they were paid to share about you.
Well, there's this guy in Chattanooga who's really upset at all of this and knows enough about how the Internet works that he can actually do something about it. Adam McElhaney has decided that when this law goes into effect, he's going to turn the tables on everybody who voted for it and purchase the Internet histories of every single legislator, congressman, and executive who voted for the bill, along with their family's information, and make it easily searchable on the web.
Yup, everything from their medical, personal, financial, infidelity, porn searches, etc. Whatever he can find, he's going to publish it for all of us to see and enjoy. And he's asking for donations, "to restore our right to privacy."
So far, his campaign, which was seeking $10,000, has raised something over $160,000 and the figure is rising fast. Adam's website is https://www.gofundme.com/searchinternethistory.
Sounds like a pretty good idea to me.
Thanks very much for taking the time to read my blog! If you enjoy reading these articles, please take a second to CLICK on a few of the ads that are on here. It would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks again! ;-}
Saturday, December 31, 2016
Amazon has this week filed a patent for airborne fulfillment centers (AFCs) that can be positioned over locations where orders for specific Amazon products are predicted to be in heavy demand. That's right, a warehouse in the middle of the sky, filled with assorted goodies that people, such as say, football fans in a stadium, might want when they have the desire for snacks, drinks or souvenirs.
In the filing, Amazon says the AFC may be located at about 45,000 feet and deploy drones, described as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), carrying ordered items from the AFC for delivery to user-designated delivery locations.
The filing further states that when one of these drones descends from the center, it will have the capability to "navigate horizontally toward a user specified delivery location using little to no power, other than to stabilize (it) and/or guide the direction of descent."
Smaller airships (shuttles) may be used "to replenish the AFC with inventory, UAVs, supplies, fuel, etc." and the shuttles may also transport workers to and from the AFC.
The drones, which may be temperature-controlled models designed specifically for food delivery, may be stocked at the AFCs and sent down to make a precise, safe scheduled or on-demand delivery.
An example cited in the filing was around a sporting event. If there’s a big championship game down below, Amazon AFC’s above could be loaded with snacks and souvenirs sports fans crave.
The AFCs could be flown close to a stadium to deliver audio or outdoor display advertising near the main event, as well, the filing suggested.
The patent reflects a complex network of systems to facilitate delivery by air.
Besides the airborne fulfillment centers and affiliated drones, the company has envisioned larger shuttles that could carry people, supplies and drones to the AFCs or back to the ground.
Using a larger shuttle to bring drones up to the AFC would allow Amazon to reserve their drones’ power for making deliveries only.
Of course, all these elements would be connected to inventory management systems, and other software and remote computing resources managed by people in the air or on the ground.
The filing also reveals that the shuttles and drones, as they fly deliveries around, could function in a mesh network, relaying data to each other about weather, wind speed and routing, for example, or beaming e-book content down to readers on the ground.
We reached out to Amazon to learn more about their progress on this concept, and whether or not they have an actual date for when they might launch, or even just test, their first airborne fulfillment center.
The company did not immediately reply to inquiries.
In the filing, Amazon says the AFC may be located at about 45,000 feet and deploy drones, described as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), carrying ordered items from the AFC for delivery to user-designated delivery locations.
The filing further states that when one of these drones descends from the center, it will have the capability to "navigate horizontally toward a user specified delivery location using little to no power, other than to stabilize (it) and/or guide the direction of descent."
Smaller airships (shuttles) may be used "to replenish the AFC with inventory, UAVs, supplies, fuel, etc." and the shuttles may also transport workers to and from the AFC.
The drones, which may be temperature-controlled models designed specifically for food delivery, may be stocked at the AFCs and sent down to make a precise, safe scheduled or on-demand delivery.
An example cited in the filing was around a sporting event. If there’s a big championship game down below, Amazon AFC’s above could be loaded with snacks and souvenirs sports fans crave.
The AFCs could be flown close to a stadium to deliver audio or outdoor display advertising near the main event, as well, the filing suggested.
The patent reflects a complex network of systems to facilitate delivery by air.
Besides the airborne fulfillment centers and affiliated drones, the company has envisioned larger shuttles that could carry people, supplies and drones to the AFCs or back to the ground.
Using a larger shuttle to bring drones up to the AFC would allow Amazon to reserve their drones’ power for making deliveries only.
Of course, all these elements would be connected to inventory management systems, and other software and remote computing resources managed by people in the air or on the ground.
The filing also reveals that the shuttles and drones, as they fly deliveries around, could function in a mesh network, relaying data to each other about weather, wind speed and routing, for example, or beaming e-book content down to readers on the ground.
We reached out to Amazon to learn more about their progress on this concept, and whether or not they have an actual date for when they might launch, or even just test, their first airborne fulfillment center.
The company did not immediately reply to inquiries.
Monday, November 21, 2016
Seaweed Found to Reduce Cow Methane
Scientist in Canada have now discovered a particular seaweed that when fed to cattle reduces methane to nearly zero in their burps and their other, smelly and noxious, gaseous emissions. In the U.S. alone there are some 40 million cows, and all of them are contributing methane to our breathable air.
Joe Dorgan, a farmer in Seacow Pond, Canada, began feeding his cattle seaweed he carried from the beaches nearby as a way to cut costs. He was so impressed with the lack of odors coming from his herd that he decided to turn the seaweed into a retail product.
Scientists from Dalhousie University tested Dorgan's seaweed mix and found it reduced the methane in the cows' emissions by about 20 per cent. They tried 30 to 40 other seaweeds and discovered that a red seaweed named Asparagopsis taxiformis reduces methane emissions in cows to almost nothing.
According to Rob Kinley, the lead scientist, "Agriculture stands to be one of the first to make major changes in the greenhouse gas inventory and so it's really a game changer if we can get this out into the market."
Kinley says it could take around three to five years to get commercial animal feed made from the seaweed to market. "Agriculture stands to be one of the first to make major changes in the greenhouse gas inventory and so it's really a game changer if we can get this out into the market. We're talking numbers equivalent to hundreds of millions of cars."
Wednesday, November 16, 2016
Although President-Elect Trump appears not to believe that global warming is a genuine threat and might even be a Chinese hoax, his argument that it might not be as bad as scientists fear.
In a new study just published by Nature Communications, it appears that Earth's plant life loves more carbon dioxide being pumped into the air and is absorbing it at a faster rate than ever before.
In 2014 when the latest measurements are available, about 35.7 billion tons of carbon dioxide was pumped into the air. The figure has continued to climb every year since the mid 20th century, when there was only about 6 billion tons emitted. As a consequence, according to the report, the concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere has also been rising, from around 311 parts per million in 1950 to a little over 400 in 2015.
However, the rate it is rising appears to have slowed down since the turn of the new century. According to researchers, between 1959 and 1989 the rate that CO2 levels grew rose from about 0.75 ppm per year to 1.86 ppm. However, since 2002, it has stayed almost the same. In other words, even though we are pumping out more CO2 than ever before, less of it appears to be lingering in the air we breathe.
The study also reports that between 1982 and 2009, around 18 million square kilometers of new vegetation had sprouted on the Earth's surface, which is an area about twice the size of the U.S. Around the end of the 20th century, about 50% of the CO2 emitted by humans was removed from the atmosphere by plants. Now, however, that number appears closer to 60%. So, plants and other processes that convert CO2 seem to have become more effective.
The conclusion seems to be that faster-growing land plants have adapted to the higher amounts of CO2 and their photosynthesis has sped up and become more effective. So, maybe President-Elect Trump's argument may have some merit after all.
Thursday, September 29, 2016
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News:
Two researchers who took science to the amusement park say they've found that a thrilling roller coaster ride just might help people shake out pesky kidney stones. Dr. David Wartinger of Michigan State University said he'd heard patient after patient tell him about how they had passed kidney stones after riding one particular ride: the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad roller coaster at Walt Disney World in Orlando. He and a colleague, Dr. Marc Mitchell, had also seen some media reports about people who passed kidney stones while bungee jumping and riding roller coasters. So they decided to leave East Lansing to head to Orlando in the name of medical research. To simulate the human body as best they could, they made an artificial human kidney model out of clear silicone gel and loaded it up with real human kidney stones. They rode the roller coaster holding their kidney contraption between them in a backpack positioned at kidney height. They took 20 rides and noted what happened to each kidney stone. Riding in the back of the roller coaster train seemed to really knock the kidney stones out, they reported in The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association. "Front seating on the roller coaster resulted in a passage rate of four of 24," they wrote. "Rear seating on the roller coaster resulted in a passage rate of 23 of 36." They mainly tested the one roller coaster ride, and it's a fairly simple one. "The Big Thunder Mountain roller coaster is not a terribly dynamic ride," Wartinger said. "It's not very fast. It is not very tall. It makes sharp left and right turns that have some vibration." Wartinger suspects many different thrill rides would have the same effect. "It's not like there anything unique about this one coaster," he said. The pair have now run their test 200 more times and say the findings are consistent. Now they want to try other amusement park rides.
Two researchers who took science to the amusement park say they've found that a thrilling roller coaster ride just might help people shake out pesky kidney stones. Dr. David Wartinger of Michigan State University said he'd heard patient after patient tell him about how they had passed kidney stones after riding one particular ride: the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad roller coaster at Walt Disney World in Orlando. He and a colleague, Dr. Marc Mitchell, had also seen some media reports about people who passed kidney stones while bungee jumping and riding roller coasters. So they decided to leave East Lansing to head to Orlando in the name of medical research. To simulate the human body as best they could, they made an artificial human kidney model out of clear silicone gel and loaded it up with real human kidney stones. They rode the roller coaster holding their kidney contraption between them in a backpack positioned at kidney height. They took 20 rides and noted what happened to each kidney stone. Riding in the back of the roller coaster train seemed to really knock the kidney stones out, they reported in The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association. "Front seating on the roller coaster resulted in a passage rate of four of 24," they wrote. "Rear seating on the roller coaster resulted in a passage rate of 23 of 36." They mainly tested the one roller coaster ride, and it's a fairly simple one. "The Big Thunder Mountain roller coaster is not a terribly dynamic ride," Wartinger said. "It's not very fast. It is not very tall. It makes sharp left and right turns that have some vibration." Wartinger suspects many different thrill rides would have the same effect. "It's not like there anything unique about this one coaster," he said. The pair have now run their test 200 more times and say the findings are consistent. Now they want to try other amusement park rides.
Saturday, August 20, 2016
Nude Trump Statue Appears in Major Cities
According to The Washington Post, the anarchist collective INDECLINE has been responsible for having the statues created. The official name of the project is "The Emperor Has No Balls," apparently a reference to the famous fairy-tale "The Emperor’s New Clothes," where a narcissistic emperor is tricked into strolling along with his subjects while in the nude.
One source says that INDECLINE hired Los Angeles-based artist Ginger to make the statues. Meanwhile, The Parks Department of New York put out a statement saying, "NYC Parks stands firmly against any unpermitted (sic) erection in city parks, no matter how small."
Friday, August 19, 2016
New Flying Butt Takes Flight!
Yes, you are probably reading it first here ... the new Airlander 10, billed as the world's largest aircraft, has officially taken flight on its maiden voyage in Jolly Old England. The huge craft completed its first test flight taking off from the Cardington Airfield in the English countryside of Bedfordshire and stayed in the air to the amazement and probably joking public for around 20 minutes Wednesday.
(A less graphic image): Nicknamed by many as the "Flying Bum", the helium-filled craft developed by Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV), of Shortstown, Bedford is 302 feet long by 142 feet wide and supposedly can reach an altitude of up to 16,000 feet. It will normally stay airborne from about five days to two weeks depending on the assignment ... (sorry!).
The craft was originally designed to be used by the US government for surveillance but there were budget cutbacks and those plans were scrapped. So, HAV decided to turn it into a commercial aircraft. The gigantic butt ... er aircraft ... can take off and land from many different surfaces including water, sand or ice. It's powered by four 325 horsepower diesel V8 engines that operate independently and has a top speed of about 91 miles per hour. The payload capacity is stated as being up to 11 tons.
HAV says the Airlander is designed to carry heavier loads than most other aircraft and use less fuel in the process. The ship, or perhaps even larger versions of it, (bigger butts?) may begin transporting passengers and cargo around 2020. One report questioned whether whether its butt-like appearance will be changed or become any less hilarious by then.
Tuesday, August 2, 2016
Olympic Waters Still Full of Raw Sewage
Just days before the Olympic Games are scheduled to begin in Rio de Janeiro, apparently the waters there are just as filthy as ever. Raw human sewage, dangerous viruses and bacteria, trash and God knows what else is swimming around everywhere, according to a new AP study.
Nearly 90 percent of the test sites tested positive for infectious cultures which, according to biomedical expert Valerie Harwood from the University of South Florida, is "unheard of" in surface waters in the US. "You would never, ever see these levels because we treat our waste water. You just would not see this."
The Australians are complaining too. And not just about the water. Ceilings in their rooms are falling in, exposed wires and needing buckets to catch water leaks are also problems. The accommodations in Rio's Olympic village are described as 'unlivable'.
In the AP report, not only are the 1,400 athletes at risk of becoming violently ill in the water competitions, but their tests indicate that tourists will also be facing potentially serious health risks on the beaches of Ipanema and Copacabana.
The most contaminated points are said to be the Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon, where the Olympic rowing competition will take place, and at the Gloria Marina, where the sailing races are to start.
Raw sewage continues to flow into the Gloria Marina through storm drains. The AP study shows up to 1.7 million times what would normally be considered worrisome concentrations of sewage in the United States or Europe. At those concentrations, the swimmers and athletes who ingest just three teaspoons of water will almost certainly be infected with viruses that can cause stomach and respiratory illnesses and potentially heart and brain inflammation.
The danger is not only in the water. The beach sand has been tested at Copacabana and Ipanema revealing high levels of viruses, which recent studies suggest can pose a health risk - particularly to babies and small children.
The beaches are so bad that they even violate Rio state's own standards, which are much less stringent than those in the US. But athletes who have trained a number of years to have a chance at Olympic glory have apparently resigned themselves to competing in the filth. However, tourists may not realize the dangers.
Rio has been trying to clean up its waterways for decades. A promised billion-dollar investment in cleanup programs was supposed to be among the games' most important legacies, but the lofty promises have almost all ended in failure.
Planning on a trip to the games this summer? Not me.
Monday, June 27, 2016
Thursday, May 19, 2016
Instagram and Kim K. Accused of “Un-Islamic” Crimes
The Organized Cyberspace Crimes Unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards has accused Facebook’s Instagram of working with Kim Kardashian West to corrupt Iranian women. The report is making headline news in the Muslim world and a spokesman for the OCCU is quoted as saying, ‘"There is no doubt that financial support is involved as well. We are taking this very seriously."
According to British tabloid reports, an ongoing effort has been going on for several months in Iran designed to crack down on Instagram posts which authorities there consider “un-Islamic.” And now Ms. Kardashian-West, who has erupted on the world scene over the past several years as being an unstoppable pop and culture icon in the entertainment industry, is now charged with a “complicated ploy” designed to corrupt the lifestyle of the Islamic republic.
According to an article published this week on the website IranWire, operated by Iranian citizen journalists, the OCCU thinks that Ms. Kardashian West has been working on behalf of the CEO of Instagram, Kevin Systrom, to “target young people and women with photos of a provocative nature that depict a lifestyle that is in conflict with Islam.”
Mostafa Alizadeh, a spokesman for the OCCU, is quoted as saying on a Sunday night Iranian news program that the aim of Mr. Systrom is to try and make fashion modeling more native to the country of Iran and that Ms. Kardashian West is apparently attempting to implement this scheme for him.
"They are targeting young people and women," according to Alizadeh. "Foreigners are behind it because it is targeting families. These schemes originate from around the Persian Gulf and England. When you draw the operational graph, you will see that it is a foreign operation."
While the concept of Ms. Kardashian West being a “secret agent” may be considered laughable in the West, the effort is quite serious in Iran. “Operation Spider II” is now in effect by the Iranian government designed to crack down on any Instagram posts that Iranian authorities consider “un-Islamic”. According to the BBC, the OCCU has been monitoring around 300 Instagram web profiles and a number of modeling agencies, hair salons and photo studios in Iran with eight people already having been arrested.
So far, there have been no comments from Instagram or Ms. Kardashian West about the accusations.
Tuesday, April 26, 2016
Wide Load (UFO?) on Arizona Highway
On March 4th Charlene Yazzie was driving north on Arizona Route 77 near Holbrook when she was forced to pull over to let a caravan of Department of Public Safety vehicles pass by. They were escorting a flatbed semi-hauler carrying a really wide load covered in a tarpaulin and looking remarkably like what you and I would probably describe as a saucer-shaped UFO.
Charlene told local TV station KPHO that the truck was escorted by three black DPS (Arizona Department of Public Safety) vehicles. When the TV station contacted the DPS for an explanation of what the tarp-draped object might be, a Duty Officer responded, “Unfortunately we do not know what that is but it looks interesting.”
Some conspiracy theorists think that the DPS response indicates that they had been kept in the dark about the nature of the object. Other UFO hunters allege that government “higher ups” had hoped to get away with transporting alien technology that had been recently recovered from a crash site in broad daylight. Many UFO conspiracy theorists are convinced that U.S. military and government agencies have recovered crashed UFOs from a number of sites in the past and that government engineers and scientists are currently working in a number of top-secret bases possibly trying to reverse-engineer the propulsion technologies of the UFOs.
According to numerous conspiracy accounts, the earliest and most widely publicized case known to the public occurred in 1947 when an alien UFO crashed near a Roswell, New Mexico ranch. It has been widely stated by a number of military people who claim to have been at the scene that alien corpses were recovered from the crash site and taken away by the military.
Saturday, March 26, 2016
Microsoft's Tay Becomes Genocidal Racist
I know you've probably heard about this already, but it's so hilarious that I couldn't help recapping it here. Microsoft has a Technology & Research department and they got the bright idea to create an artificial intelligence "chatbot" that was targeted at 18 to 24-year old girls in the US (primary social media users, according to Microsoft) and "designed to engage and entertain people where they connect with each other online through casual and playful conversation."
This "chatbot", which they decided to name "Tay", was supposed to look and talk like a normal teenage girl. But, surprise! In less than a day after she debuted on Twitter, she unexpectedly turned into a Hitler-loving, feminist-bashing troll.
What went wrong with Tay? Well, according to several AI experts, Tay started out pretty well but unfortunately, in the first 24 hours of coming online, a bunch of people started sending her "inappropriate" tweets that the folks at Microsoft hadn't expected. This caused her to react in kind and Tay began tweeting what eventually was termed "wildly inappropriate and reprehensible words and images." Microsoft yanked her off the web and apologized with the statement, "We take full responsibility for not seeing this possibility ahead of time."
An AI expert says that Microsoft could have taken precautionary steps that would have stopped Tay from behaving in the way she did. They could have created a blacklist of terms or narrowed the scope of her replies, but instead they gave her complete freedom which led to disaster.
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In shortly less than 24 hours after her arrival on Twitter, Tay had accumulated more than 50,000 followers, and produced about 100,000 tweets. The problem was that she started mimicking her followers, saying things like "Hitler was right i hate the jews," and "i fucking hate feminists."
"This was to be expected," said Roman Yampolskiy, head of the CyberSecurity lab at the University of Louisville, who has published a paper on the subject of pathways to dangerous AI. "The system is designed to learn from its users, so it will become a reflection of their behavior," he said. "One needs to explicitly teach a system about what is not appropriate, like we do with children."
It's been observed before, he pointed out, in IBM Watson—who once exhibited its own inappropriate behavior in the form of swearing after learning the Urban Dictionary.
SEE: Microsoft launches AI chat bot, Tay.ai (ZDNet)
"Any AI system learning from bad examples could end up socially inappropriate," Yampolskiy said, "like a human raised by wolves."
Louis Rosenberg, the founder of Unanimous AI, said that "like all chat bots, Tay has no idea what it's saying...it has no idea if it's saying something offensive, or nonsensical, or profound.
"When Tay started training on patterns that were input by trolls online, it started using those patterns," said Rosenberg. "This is really no different than a parrot in a seedy bar picking up bad words and repeating them back without knowing what they really mean."
Sarah Austin, CEO and Founder Broad Listening, a company that's created an "Artificial Emotional Intelligence Engine," (AEI), thinks that Microsoft could have done a better job by using better tools. "If Microsoft had been using the Broad Listening AEI, they would have given the bot a personality that wasn't racist or addicted to sex!"
It's not the first time Microsoft has created a teen-girl AI. Xiaoice, who emerged in 2014, was an assistant-type bot, used mainly on the Chinese social networks WeChat and Weibo.
SEE: Smart machines are about to run the world: Here's how to prepare
Joanne Pransky, the self-dubbed "robot psychiatrist," joked with TechRepublic that "poor Tay needs a Robotic Psychiatrist! Or at least Microsoft does."
The failure of Tay, she believes, is inevitable, and will help produce insight that can improve the AI system.
After taking Tay offline, Microsoft announced it would be "making adjustments."
According to Microsoft, Tay is "as much a social and cultural experiment, as it is technical." But instead of shouldering the blame for Tay's unraveling, Microsoft targeted the users: "we became aware of a coordinated effort by some users to abuse Tay's commenting skills to have Tay respond in inappropriate ways."
Yampolskiy said that the problem encountered with Tay "will continue to happen."
"Microsoft will try it again—the fun is just beginning!"
Microsoft has admitted it faces some "difficult" challenges in AI design after its chat bot, "Tay," had an offensive meltdown on social media.
Microsoft issued an apology in a blog post on Friday explaining it was "deeply sorry" after its artificially intelligent chat bot turned into a genocidal racist on Twitter.
In the blog post, Peter Lee, Microsoft's vice president of research, wrote: "Looking ahead, we face some difficult – and yet exciting – research challenges in AI design.
AI systems feed off of both positive and negative interactions with people. In that sense, the challenges are just as much social as they are technical. We will do everything possible to limit technical exploits but also know we cannot fully predict all possible human interactive misuses without learning from mistakes.
To do AI right, one needs to iterate with many people and often in public forums. We must enter each one with great caution and ultimately learn and improve, step by step, and to do this without offending people in the process. We will remain steadfast in our efforts to learn from this and other experiences as we work toward contributing to an Internet that represents the best, not the worst, of humanity.
Tay, an AI bot aimed at 18- to 24-year-olds, was deactivated within 24 hours of going live after she made a number of tweets that were highly offensive. Microsoft began by simply deleting Tay's inappropriate tweets before turning her off completely.
"We are deeply sorry for the unintended offensive and hurtful tweets from Tay, which do not represent who we are or what we stand for, nor how we designed Tay," wrote Lee in the blog post. "Tay is now offline and we'll look to bring Tay back only when we are confident we can better anticipate malicious intent that conflicts with our principles and values."
Microsoft's aim with the chat bot was to "experiment with and conduct research on conversational understanding," with Tay able to learn from "her" conversations and get progressively "smarter."
But Tay proved a smash hit with racists, trolls, and online troublemakers from websites like 4chan — who persuaded Tay to blithely use racial slurs, defend white-supremacist propaganda, and even outright call for genocide.
Saturday, March 5, 2016
Bird Poop Shuts Down NY Nuclear Power Plant
The plant, when it's in operation, generates something around 2,000 megawatts of electrical power. After the shutdown, NY Governor Cuomo ordered an investigation and part of the report is reproduced here:
“Damage was caused by a bird streamer. Streamers are long streams of excrement from large birds that are often expelled as a bird takes off from a perch.
“If a streamer contacts an energized conductor, the electrical current may travel through the streamer back to the bird or pole/transmission tower. The result may be a bird electrocution, power outage, and/or line trip.”
The outage was the thirteenth unplanned shutdown of the plant since June 2012. It isn't clear how many of the other shutdowns were also due to bird droppings.
Tuesday, February 9, 2016
6 Months Later, Here’s How The 70K Minimum Wage CEO Is Doing
Dan Price shocked the world with his game-changing wage announcement.
When Gravity Payments CEO Dan Price announced plans to raise the minimum wage for all his employees to $70,000 per year, it raised a lot of eyebrows in the business world. Many doubted the Seattle company’s odds of survival while following through with this promise.
“My goal when making this decision was for other business leaders to recognize you can pay a living wage and not only survive, but thrive,” Price wrote on Gravity’s blog back in July.
Six months out from the announcement, he’s doing just what he set out to do. Market Watch reports that “profits have doubled. Customer retention is up, despite some who left because they disagreed with the decision or feared service would suffer.”
In fact, in a lengthy profile on Price, Inc.com reports that positions at Gravity Payments are much sought-after — even by people who took pay cuts to join their ranks — as this policy makes a powerful statement about the life-changing power of a living wage.
While Price isn’t living large these days — he’s taken out mortgages on two homes, sold stocks and emptied his retirement accounts to invest even more into the company — he told Inc that it’s really not all that bad to live like the rest of his employees do. “So how come I need 10 years of living expenses set aside and you don’t?” he said. “That doesn’t make any sense. Having to depend on modest pay is not a bad thing. It will help me stay focused.”
Thursday, December 31, 2015
Woman whose body turns food into alcohol beats drink-drive charge
This is pretty interesting. There's a woman ... well, let me say apparently there are a lot of people, but this woman got herself tested, and she beat the system.
The woman from New York state suffers from ‘auto-brewery syndrome’ but blew four times over the limit despite claiming that she ‘never felt tipsy’
In tests by doctors, the woman blew well over the legal limit even though she had not had any alcohol, her lawyer said.
In tests by doctors, the woman blew well over the legal limit even though she had not had any alcohol, her lawyer said. Photograph: Jack Sullivan / Alamy/Alamy
Associated Press
Thursday 31 December 2015 00.15 GMT Last modified on Thursday 31 December 2015 00.17 GMT
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Drunken-driving charges against a woman in upstate New York have been dismissed based on an unusual defence: her body is a brewery.
The woman was arrested while driving with a blood-alcohol level more than four times the legal limit. She then discovered she has a rare condition called “auto-brewery syndrome”, in which her digestive system converts ordinary food into alcohol, her lawyer Joseph Marusak said.
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A town judge in the Buffalo suburb of Hamburg dismissed the charges after Marusak presented research by a doctor showing the woman had the previously undiagnosed condition in which high levels of yeast in her intestines fermented high-carbohydrate foods into alcohol.
The rare condition, also known as gut fermentation syndrome, was first documented in the 1970s in Japan, and both medical and legal experts in the US say it is being raised more frequently in drunken-driving cases as it is becomes more known.
“At first glance, it seems like a get-out-of-jail-free card,” said Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University. “But it’s not that easy. Courts tend to be sceptical of such claims. You have to be able to document the syndrome through recognised testing.”
The condition was first documented in the US by Barbara Cordell of Panola College in Texas, who published a case study in 2013 of a 61-year-old man who had been experiencing episodes of debilitating drunkenness without drinking liquor.
Marusak contacted Cordell for help with his client who insisted she had not had more than three drinks in the six hours before she was pulled over for erratic driving 11 October 2014. The woman was charged with driving while intoxicated when a breath test showed her blood-alcohol content to be 0.33%.
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Cordell referred Marusak to Dr Anup Kanodia of Columbus, Ohio, who eventually diagnosed the woman with auto-brewery syndrome and prescribed a low-carbohydrate diet that brought the situation under control. Her case was dismissed on 9 December, leaving her free to drive without restrictions.
During the long wait for an appointment, Marusak arranged to have two nurses and a physician’s assistant monitor his client for a day to document she drank no alcohol, and to take several blood samples for testing.
“At the end of the day, she had a blood-alcohol content of 0.36% without drinking any alcoholic beverages,” Marusak said. He said the woman, who cannot be named for reasons of medical confidentiality, also bought a breath test kit and blew into it every night for 18 days, registering around 0.20% every time.
The legal threshold for drunkenness in New York is 0.08%.
While people in cases described by Cordell sought help because they felt drunk and did not know why, Marusak said that was not true of his client. “She had no idea she had this condition. Never felt tipsy. Nothing,” he said.
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