Radio Commands Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Radio Commands. Here they are! All 84 of them:

Hey,” Watney said over the radio, “I've got an idea.” “Of course you do,” Lewis said. “What do you got?” “I could find something sharp in here and poke a hole in the glove of my EVA suit. I could use the escaping air as a thruster and fly my way to you. The source of thrust would be on my arm, so I'd be able to direct it pretty easily.” “How does he come up with this shit?” Martinez interjected. “Hmm,” Lewis said. “Could you get 42 meters per second that way?” “No idea,” Watney said. “I can't see you having any control if you did that,” Lewis said. “You'd be eyeballing the intercept and using a thrust vector you can barely control.” “I admit it's fatally dangerous,” Watney said. “But consider this: I'd get to fly around like Iron Man.” “We'll keep working on ideas,” Lewis said. “Iron Man, Commander. Iron Man.
Andy Weir (The Martian)
The Bible is right: A deluge of images does encourage idolatry. Look at the cults of personality in America today. Look at Hollywood. Look at Washington. I'd like to see the next presidential race be run according to Second Commandment principles. No commercials. A radio-only debate. We need an ugly president. I know we're missing out on some potential Abe Lincolns because they'd look gawky and gangly on TV.
A.J. Jacobs (The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible)
In a society that is essentially designed to organize, direct, and gratify mass impulses, what is there to minister to the silent zones of man as an individual? Religion? Art? Nature? No, the church has turned religion into standardized public spectacle, and the museum has done the same for art. The Grand Canyon and Niagara Falls have been looked at so much that they've become effete, sucked empty by too many stupid eyes. What is there to minister to the silent zones of man as an individual? How about a cold chicken bone on a paper plate at midnight, how about a lurid lipstick lengthening or shortening at your command, how about a Styrofoam nest abandoned by a 'bird' you've never known, how about a pair of windshield wipers pursuing one another futilely while you drive home alone through a downpour, how about something beneath a seat touched by your shoe at the movies, how about worn pencils, cute forks, fat little radios, boxes of bow ties, and bubbles on the side of a bathtub? Yes, these are the things, these kite strings and olive oil cans and Valentine hearts stuffed with nougat, that form the bond between the autistic vision and the experiential world, it is to show these things in their true mysterious light that is the purpose of the moon.
Tom Robbins
Vogel,” she radioed. “I need you to come back in and make a bomb.” “Um. Again, please, Commander?” Vogel replied. “A bomb,” Lewis confirmed. “You’re a chemist. Can you make a bomb out of stuff on board?
Andy Weir (The Martian)
Any story told in this machine age must be a story of fragments, for fragments are all the world has left: interrupted threads of talk at crowded cocktail parties; snatches of poems heard as a radio dial spins through its arc; incomplete commandments reclaimed from shattered stones.
Dexter Palmer (The Dream of Perpetual Motion)
Dante was standing near the Ponte Vecchio, a bridge that crosses the Arno River in Florence. It was just before 1300… Dante saw Beatrice standing on the bridge. He was a young man, she even younger, and that vision contained the whole of eternity for him. Dante did not speak to her and saw her very little. And then Beatrice died, carried off by plague. Dante was stricken with the loss of his vision. She was the connection between his soul and Heaven itself, and from it the Divine Comedy was born. Six hundred fifty years later, during World War II, the Americans were chasing the German army up the Italian peninsula. The Germans were blowing up everything of aid to the progression of the American army, including the bridges across the Arno River. But no one wanted to blow up the Ponte Vecchio, because Beatrice had stood on it and Dante had written about her. So the German commandant made radio contact with the Americans and, in plain language, said they would leave the Ponte Vecchio intact if the Americans would promise not to use it. The promise was held. The bridge was not blown up, and not one American soldier or piece of equipment went across it. We’re such hard bitten people that we need hard bitten proof of things, and this is the most hard bitten fact I know to present to you. The bridge was spared, in a modern, ruthless war, because Beatrice had stood upon it.
Robert A. Johnson (Inner Gold: Understanding Psychological Projection)
Hitler's dictatorship was the first of an industrial estate in this age of modern technology, a dictatorship which employed to perfection the instruments of technology to dominate its own people. By means of such instruments of technology, eighty million persons could be made subject to the will of one individual. Telephone, teletype, radio, made it possible to transmit the commands of the highest levels directly to the lowest organs where they were executed uncritically
Albert Speer (Inside the Third Reich)
Son, you've got this. You think Helena and I would have invited just anybody into our home? You're our family too. Helena loved you, and you know I do, too. Come back safe. Because you know there's no way I can handle Kady all on my own. I'll be on the radio the whole time, baby girl I'll be with Yulin in engineering. I have to say, when we used to have talk about your future, commanding a battle fleet isn't quite what I imagined, but I know you can do this. I'll be with you every step. I'll be in touch every minute, Ella. There's no way I'm letting anything happen to you, and I demand a rematch when this is over. If you think I'm letting a 15 year old beat me at cards you've got another thing coming. Nik, you are what your actions make you. Not what other people say you are. You've decided who you are, in the face of a world that wanted to tell you otherwise. I get the impression maybe nobody's ever told you they're proud of you. I am, Nik. I'm proud to know you. You have this, Hanna. Your father would be so damn proud of you right now. He knew exactly how incredible you were. We used to talk about it, late at night, these women we were raising. Just how far and fast our daughters would exceed us. He loved that.
Amie Kaufman (Obsidio (The Illuminae Files, #3))
The sergeants are shunted forward and they blink and stare up at Gonzo as he leans on the edge of his giant mixing bowl. MacArthur never addressed his troops from a mixing bowl--not even one made from a spare geodesic radio emplacement shell--and certainly de Gaulle never did. But Gonzo Lubitsch does, and he does it as if a whole long line of commanders were standing at his shoulder, urging him on. "Gentlemen," says Gonzo softly, "holidays are over. I need an oven, and I need one in about twenty minutes, or these fine flapjacks will go to waste, and that is not happening." And something about this statement and the voice in which he says it makes it clear that this is simply true. One way or another, this thing will get done. Under a layer of grime and horror, these two are soldiers, and more, they are productive, can-do sorts of people. Rustily but with a gratitude which is not so far short of worship, they say "Yes, sir" and are about their business.
Nick Harkaway (The Gone-Away World)
Most of the successful innovators and entrepreneurs in this book had one thing in common: they were product people. They cared about, and deeply understood, the engineering and design. They were not primarily marketers or salesmen or financial types; when such folks took over companies, it was often to the detriment of sustained innovation. “When the sales guys run the company, the product guys don’t matter so much, and a lot of them just turn off,” Jobs said. Larry Page felt the same: “The best leaders are those with the deepest understanding of the engineering and product design.”34 Another lesson of the digital age is as old as Aristotle: “Man is a social animal.” What else could explain CB and ham radios or their successors, such as WhatsApp and Twitter? Almost every digital tool, whether designed for it or not, was commandeered by humans for a social purpose: to create communities, facilitate communication, collaborate on projects, and enable social networking. Even the personal computer, which was originally embraced as a tool for individual creativity, inevitably led to the rise of modems, online services, and eventually Facebook, Flickr, and Foursquare. Machines, by contrast, are not social animals. They don’t join Facebook of their own volition nor seek companionship for its own sake. When Alan Turing asserted that machines would someday behave like humans, his critics countered that they would never be able to show affection or crave intimacy. To indulge Turing, perhaps we could program a machine to feign affection and pretend to seek intimacy, just as humans sometimes do. But Turing, more than almost anyone, would probably know the difference. According to the second part of Aristotle’s quote, the nonsocial nature of computers suggests that they are “either a beast or a god.” Actually, they are neither. Despite all of the proclamations of artificial intelligence engineers and Internet sociologists, digital tools have no personalities, intentions, or desires. They are what we make of them.
Walter Isaacson (The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution)
She thought for a moment. "Vogel," she radioed. "I need you to come back in and make a bomb." "Um. Again, please Commander?" Vogel replied. "A bomb," Lewis confirmed. "You're a chemist. Can you make a bomb out of the stuff on board?" "Ja," Vogel said. "We have flammables and pure oxygen.
Andy Weir (The Martian)
At 1:23pm Zeros were approaching Pearl Harbor where it was 7:53am. At that moment the flight commander radioed Admiral Nagumo TORA, TORA, TORA@ The repeated code word, meaning "tiger," stood for 'We have succeeded in surprise attack'." Two minutes later torpedo bombers began diving on Battleship Row.
John Toland (Infamy: Pearl Harbor and its Aftermath)
By controlling the mass media – television, newspapers, radio, and print – the secret organization with the code name, Rothfellers, convinced people on earth to rebuild their weapons systems as a means of providing money and jobs for everyone. Computer games such as Tron, Space Commander, Defender, and PacMan, replaced Monopoly and other home games during the last of the twentieth century. The games were a scheme of the Rothfellers, with the aid of President Sam Emen, to secretly prepare young boys and girls for nuclear wars by programming their minds to handle computertized warfare. Such preparation would be useful, once the draft was brought into full force.
Sophia Stewart (The Third Eye)
The gunnery sergeant didn’t crack a smile at the radio intercept of Faith’s concept of a backup plan, an intercept that had caused Commander Bradburn, skipper of the Dallas, to literally fall out of his command chair laughing. Sands managed to watch the video stone-faced as she boarded the Voyage and began her “fifteen minutes of mayhem,” set in the video to the tune of Chumbawamba’s Tubthumping. He managed to keep a straight face the third time she popped back up like a jack-in-the-box after being dogpiled by zombies. He held it in during her overheard running commentary as the rest of the Marines, even the NCOs, started rolling on the deck. It was when she got the Halligan tool stuck in a zombie’s head and overbalanced that he snorted. When she unstuck her bent machete and it caught a male zombie in the groin he started laughing out loud. When the, admittedly not petite, girl stuck a boot knife in a zombie’s eye then threw him over the side, tears started running down his face and he completely lost his composure as a senior NCO of the United States Marine Corps.
John Ringo (To Sail a Darkling Sea (Black Tide Rising, #2))
Lise was on only the first day of what would be a three-day bicycle ride over small back roads “through thick enemy formations” to the combat zone. She slept in ditches when she tired, then picked up her vélo and began traveling again to her headquarters. She was nowhere near a radio when the communiqué from General Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme commander of Allied forces, aired for the people of Normandy: The lives of many of you depend on the speed with which you obey. Leave your towns at once—stay off the roads—go on foot and take nothing with you that is difficult to carry. Do not gather in groups which may be mistaken for enemy troops. The largest armada the world had ever known was minutes away from landing on the northern beaches of France. The hour of your liberation is approaching.
Sarah Rose (D-Day Girls: The Spies Who Armed the Resistance, Sabotaged the Nazis, and Helped Win World War II)
But he survived, that radio announcer. His ship and five others out of the flotilla of ten came through, a bit radioactive, but otherwise unharmed. And I understand that the first thing that happened to him when he reported back to his office after treatment was a reprimand for the use of overcolloquial language which had given offense to a number of listeners by its neglect of the Third Commandment.
John Wyndham
Only then, after all these things had been accomplished within the first couple of hours of the coup, could the messages, which had been drawn up and filed, be sent out by radio, telephone and telegraph to the commanders of the Home Army in other cities and to the top generals commanding the troops at the front and in the occupied zones, announcing that Hitler was dead and that a new anti-Nazi government had been formed in Berlin. The revolt would have to be over—and achieved—within twenty-four hours and the new government firmly installed. Otherwise the vacillating generals might have second thoughts. Goering and Himmler might be able to rally them, and a civil war would ensue. In that case the fronts would cave in and the very chaos and collapse which the plotters wished to prevent would become inevitable.
William L. Shirer (The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany)
The new Iraqi army had a camp nearby. Those idiots took it in their head to send a few shots our way as well. Every day. We hung a VF panel over our position—an indicator showing we were friendly—and the shots kept coming. We radioed their command. The shots kept coming. We called back and cussed out their command. The shots kept coming. We tried everything to get them to stop, short of calling in a bomb strike.
Chris Kyle (American Sniper)
Take Charge and Move Out (TACAMO) planes would quickly get off the ground, climb steeply, and send an emergency war order on a very-low-frequency radio, using an antenna five miles long. SAC began to develop a Post Attack Command and Control System. It would rely on airborne command posts, a command post on a train, a command post at the bottom of an abandoned gold mine in Cripple Creek, Colorado, and a command post, known as The Notch, inside Bare Mountain, near Amherst, Massachusetts. The
Eric Schlosser (Command and Control)
The radio was playing ‘Easter Parade’ and I thought, but this is Jewish genius on a par with the Ten Commandments. God gave Moses the Ten Commandments and then He gave to Irving Berlin ‘Easter Parade’ and ‘White Christmas.’ The two holidays that celebrate the divinity of Christ—the divinity that’s the very heart of the Jewish rejection of Christianity—and what does Irving Berlin brilliantly do? He de-Christs them both! Easter he turns into a fashion show and Christmas into a holiday about snow.
Philip Roth (Operation Shylock: A Confession)
I’m not your mama,” hisses Werner. “Come on, now.” Frederick’s expression is entirely without artifice. Somewhere in the kitchen, the maid is listening. There is no other sound, not of traffic or airplanes or trains or radios or the specter of Frau Schwartzenberger rattling the cage of the elevator. No chanting no singing no silk banners no bands no trumpets no mother no father no slick-fingered commandant dragging a finger across his back. The city seems utterly still, as though everyone is listening, waiting for someone to slip.
Anthony Doerr (All the Light We Cannot See)
Some leaders choose to fight to their deaths, taking their men with them in a blaze of glory. In many ways it is easier for the leader if he can die quickly and cleanly with his men and need never live with what he has done. One of the more striking of such situations is that of Major James Devereux, the commander of the U.S. Marines defending Wake Island. The small marine detachment on Wake held out against overwhelming Japanese forces from December 8 to December 22, 1941. The last message sent out before Devereux and his men were overwhelmed was received by radio telegraphy and said simply: S…E…N…D…. M…O…R…E…. J…A…P…S…
Dave Grossman (On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society)
The events of the day overcame me all at once, and I struggled to breathe without crying. As darkness fell over Qalat Sukkar, I sat alone in the dim green light of the radios. I felt sick for the shepherd boys, for the girl in the blue dress, and for all the innocent people who surely lived in Nasiriyah, Ar Rifa, and the other towns this war would consume. I hurt for my Marines, goodhearted American guys who’d bear these burdens for the rest of their lives. And I mourned for myself. Not in self-pity, but for the kid who’d come to Iraq. He was gone. I did all this in the dark, away from the platoon, because combat command is the loneliest job in the world.
Nathaniel Fick
Many of the great economic masters, though they had originally favored radio-bliss in moderation as an opiate for the discontented workers, now turned against it. Their craving was for power; and for power they needed slaves whose labor they could command for their great industrial ventures. They therefore developed an instrument which was at once an opiate and a spur. By every method of propaganda they sought to rouse the passions of nationalism and racial hatred. They created, in fact, the "Other Fascism", complete with lies, with mystical cult of race and state, with scorn of reason, with praise of brutal mastery, with appeal at once to the vilest and to the generous motives of the deluded young.
Olaf Stapledon (Star Maker)
The close-up encounter with the enemy was like a throwback to another era, when sailing ships grappled and boarded one another. Even gunnery had once been conducted at such close range, yardarm to yardarm, that one ship’s men could hear the other’s shouts, prayers, songs, and pleas. The killing was more personal, but there also existed the possibility of surrender, capture, and mercy. By the middle of the twentieth century the reach of new weapons had made combat a cold, long-distance business. Warships didn’t surrender to one another any longer. Commanders were insulated from their counterparts in closed bridges, communicating by secret codes and radio frequencies. Sea warfare became thoroughly depersonalized.
James D. Hornfischer (The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour)
Every 30 seconds, it transmitted portions of [a Chopin Polonaise] to tell the world that the capital was still in Polish hands. Angered by the unexpected setback, the German High Command decided to pound the stubborn citadel into submission. In round-the-clock raids, bombers knocked out flourmills, gasworks, power plants and reservoirs, then sowed the residential areas with incendiaries. One witness, passing scenes of carnage, enumerated the horrors: ‘Everywhere corpses, wounded humans, dead horses . . . and hastily-dug graves.’ . . . Finally food ran out, and famished Poles, as one man put it, ‘cut off flesh as soon as a horse fell, leaving only the skeleton.’ On September 28, Warsaw Radio replaced the polonaise with a funeral dirge.15
Norman Davies (Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw)
We were scarecrows in blue uniforms. After a grand total of five days of blackboard instruction and fifty rounds at the NYPD firing range, my new police academy classmates and I were standing out on the sidewalks of central Brooklyn pretending to be police officers. They gave us badges. They gave us handcuffs. They gave us guns—standard police-issue Smith & Wesson .38 Specials. They told us, “Good luck.” In early July 1966, riots had broken out in East New York, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Brownsville, Brooklyn. Hundreds of angry young men were roaming the streets and throwing bottles and rocks. Already they had injured police officers and attempted to flip over a radio car. On one corner, police found eighteen Molotov cocktails. The borough commander was calling for reinforcements—and fast.
Ray Kelly (Vigilance: My Life Serving America and Protecting Its Empire City)
Hey," Watney said over the radio, "I've got an idea." "Of course you do," Lewis said. "What do you got?" "I could find something sharp in here and poke a hold in the glove of my EVA suit. I could use the escaping air as a thruster and fly my way to you. The source of the thrust would be on my arm, so I'd be able to direct it pretty easily." "How does he come up with this shit?" Martinez interjected. "Hmm," Lewis said. "Could you get forty-two meters per second that way?" "No idea," Watney said. "I can't see you having any control if you did that," Lewis said. "You'd be eyeballing the intercept and using a thrust vector you can barely control." "I admit it's fatally dangerous," Watney said. "But consider this: I'd get to fly around like Iron Man." "We'll keep working on ideas," Lewis said. "Iron Man, Commander. Iron Man.
Andy Weir (The Martian)
They have planned a life for you – from the cradle to the grave and beyond – which it would be easy, fatally easy, to accept. The least wandering of the attention, the least relaxation of your awareness, and already the eyelids begin to droop, the eyes grow vacant, the body starts to move in obedience to the hypnotist’s command. Wake up, wake up – before you sign that seven-year contract, buy that house you don’t really want, marry that girl you secretly despise. Don’t reach for the whisky, that won’t help you. You’ve got to think, to discriminate, to exercise your own free will and judgment. And you must do this, I repeat, without tension, quite rationally and calmly. For if you give way to fury against the hypnotists, if you smash the radio and tear the newspapers to shreds, you will only rush to the other extreme and fossilize into defiant eccentricity.
Christopher Isherwood (Exhumations)
told me more about what happened the other night?” she asked, deciding to air her worst fears. “Am I under suspicion or something?” “Everyone is.” “Especially ex-wives who are publicly humiliated on the day of the murder, right?” Something in Montoya’s expression changed. Hardened. “I’ll be back,” he promised, “and I’ll bring another detective with me, then we’ll interview you and you can ask all the questions you like.” “And you’ll answer them?” He offered a hint of a smile. “That I can’t promise. Just that I won’t lie to you.” “I wouldn’t expect you to, Detective.” He gave a quick nod. “In the meantime if you suddenly remember, or think of anything, give me a call.” “I will,” she promised, irritated, watching as he hurried down the two steps of the porch to his car. He was younger than she was by a couple of years, she guessed, though she couldn’t be certain, and there was something about him that exuded a natural brooding sexuality, as if he knew he was attractive to women, almost expected it to be so. Great. Just what she needed, a sexy-as-hell cop who probably had her pinned to the top of his murder suspect list. She whistled for the dog and Hershey bounded inside, dragging some mud and leaves with her. “Sit!” Abby commanded and the Lab dropped her rear end onto the floor just inside the door. Abby opened the door to the closet and found a towel hanging on a peg she kept for just such occasions, then, while Hershey whined in protest, she cleaned all four of her damp paws. “You’re gonna be a problem, aren’t you?” she teased, then dropped the towel over the dog’s head. Hershey shook herself, tossed off the towel, then bit at it, snagging one end in her mouth and pulling backward in a quick game of tug of war. Abby laughed as she played with the dog, the first real joy she’d felt since hearing the news about her ex-husband. The phone rang and she left the dog growling and shaking the tattered piece of terry cloth. “Hello?” she said, still chuckling at Hershey’s antics as she lifted the phone to her ear. “Abby Chastain?” “Yes.” “Beth Ann Wright with the New Orleans Sentinel.” Abby’s heart plummeted. The press. Just what she needed. “You were Luke Gierman’s wife, right?” “What’s this about?” Abby asked warily as Hershey padded into the kitchen and looked expectantly at the back door leading to her studio. “In a second,” she mouthed to the Lab. Hershey slowly wagged her tail. “Oh, I’m sorry,” Beth Ann said, sounding sincerely rueful. “I should have explained. The paper’s running a series of articles on Luke, as he was a local celebrity, and I’d like to interview you for the piece. I was thinking we could meet tomorrow morning?” “Luke and I were divorced.” “Yes, I know, but I would like to give some insight to the man behind the mike, you know. He had a certain public persona, but I’m sure my readers would like to know more about him, his history, his hopes, his dreams, you know, the human-interest angle.” “It’s kind of late for that,” Abby said, not bothering to keep the ice out of her voice. “But you knew him intimately. I thought you could come up with some anecdotes, let people see the real Luke Gierman.” “I don’t think so.” “I realize you and he had some unresolved issues.” “Pardon me?” “I caught his program the other day.” Abby tensed, her fingers holding the phone in a death grip. “So this is probably harder for you than most, but I still would like to ask you some questions.” “Maybe another time,” she hedged and Beth Ann didn’t miss a beat. “Anytime you’d like. You’re a native Louisianan, aren’t you?” Abby’s neck muscles tightened. “Born and raised, but you met Luke in Seattle when he was working for a radio station . . . what’s the call sign, I know I’ve got it somewhere.” “KCTY.” It was a matter of public record. “Oh, that’s right. Country in the City. But you grew up here and went to local schools, right? Your
Lisa Jackson (Lisa Jackson's Bentz & Montoya Bundle: Shiver, Absolute Fear, Lost Souls, Hot Blooded, Cold Blooded, Malice & Devious (A Bentz/Montoya Novel))
Qualities such as honesty, determination, and a cheerful acceptance of stress, which can all be identified through probing questionnaires and interviews, may be more important to the company in the long run than one's college grade-point average or years of "related experience." Every business is only as good as the people it brings into the organization. The corporate trainer should feel his job is the most important in the company, because it is. Exalt seniority-publicly, shamelessly, and with enough fanfare to raise goosebumps on the flesh of the most cynical spectator. And, after the ceremony, there should be some sort of permanent display so that employees passing by are continuously reminded of their own achievements and the achievements of others. The manager must freely share his expertise-not only about company procedures and products and services but also with regard to the supervisory skills he has worked so hard to acquire. If his attitude is, "Let them go out and get their own MBAs," the personnel under his authority will never have the full benefit of his experience. Without it, they will perform at a lower standard than is possible, jeopardizing the manager's own success. Should a CEO proclaim that there is no higher calling than being an employee of his organization? Perhaps not-for fear of being misunderstood-but it's certainly all right to think it. In fact, a CEO who does not feel this way should look for another company to manage-one that actually does contribute toward a better life for all. Every corporate leader should communicate to his workforce that its efforts are important and that employees should be very proud of what they do-for the company, for themselves, and, literally, for the world. If any employee is embarrassed to tell his friends what he does for a living, there has been a failure of leadership at his workplace. Loyalty is not demanded; it is created. Why can't a CEO put out his own suggested reading list to reinforce the corporate vision and core values? An attractive display at every employee lounge of books to be freely borrowed, or purchased, will generate interest and participation. Of course, the program has to be purely voluntary, but many employees will wish to be conversant with the material others are talking about. The books will be another point of contact between individuals, who might find themselves conversing on topics other than the weekend football games. By simply distributing the list and displaying the books prominently, the CEO will set into motion a chain of events that can greatly benefit the workplace. For a very cost-effective investment, management will have yet another way to strengthen the corporate message. The very existence of many companies hangs not on the decisions of their visionary CEOs and energetic managers but on the behavior of its receptionists, retail clerks, delivery drivers, and service personnel. The manager must put himself and his people through progressively challenging courage-building experiences. He must make these a mandatory group experience, and he must lead the way. People who have confronted the fear of public speaking, and have learned to master it, find that their new confidence manifests itself in every other facet of the professional and personal lives. Managers who hold weekly meetings in which everyone takes on progressively more difficult speaking or presentation assignments will see personalities revolutionized before their eyes. Command from a forward position, which means from the thick of it. No soldier will ever be inspired to advance into a hail of bullets by orders phoned in on the radio from the safety of a remote command post; he is inspired to follow the officer in front of him. It is much more effective to get your personnel to follow you than to push them forward from behind a desk. The more important the mission, the more important it is to be at the front.
Dan Carrison (Semper Fi: Business Leadership the Marine Corps Way)
A world conqueror had appeared in modern times. Alexander, Caesar, Attila, Genghis Khan, Napoleon—another such as these, appearing in the age of electricity, of rotary presses and radio, when nine men out of ten would have said it was impossible. A world conqueror has to be a man of few ideas, and those fixed; a peculiar combination of exactly the right qualities, both good and bad—iron determination, irresistible energy, and no scruples of any sort. He has to know what he wants, and permit no obstacle to stand in the way of his getting it. He has to understand the minds of other men, both foes and friends, and what greeds, fears, hates, jealousies will move them to action. He must understand the mass mind, the ideals or delusions which sway it; he must be enough of a fanatic to talk their language, though not enough to be controlled by it. He must believe in nothing but his own destiny, the glorified image of himself on the screen of history; whole races of mankind made over in his own image and according to his will. To accomplish that purpose he must be liar, thief, and murderer upon a world-wide scale; he must be ready without hesitation to commit every crime his own interest commands, whether upon individuals or nations.
Upton Sinclair (Dragon's Teeth (World's End Lanny Budd, #3))
The Israeli border police guarding the central region near the Jordanian border had been told to take all measures necessary to keep order that evening. The local colonel, Issachar Shadmi, decided that this meant setting a curfew for Palestinian Arab villages, from five p.m. to six a.m. The news of the curfew was broadcast over the radio the same day it went into force. The border police unit commanders in the region were informed of the order by their commanding officer, Major Shmuel Malinki. Malinki implied that, in the event of anyone breaking the curfew, the police could shoot to kill. Several platoons were charged with informing villagers in person. At the village of Kfar Kassem (or Kafr Qasim), close to the border with the Jordanian-controlled West Bank, a platoon arrived to announce the news—but too late in the day. They were told that many of the village’s agricultural workers were already out at work, mostly picking olives. After five p.m., the villagers returned as expected: a mixed crowd of men and women, boys and girls, riding on bicycles, wagons, and trucks. Even though he knew these civilians would not have heard about the curfew through no fault of their own, the unit commander Lieutenant Gabriel Dahan determined that they were in violation of it and therefore should be shot. Out of all the unit commanders given this order, Dahan was the only one to enforce it.16 As each small group of villagers arrived, the border police opened fire. Forty-three civilians were killed and thirteen injured. The dead were mostly children aged between eight and seventeen: twenty-three of them, plus fourteen men and six women. It was said that one nine-year-old girl was shot twenty-eight times. Another little girl watched as her eleven-year-old cousin was shot. He was dragged indoors and died in his grandfather’s arms, blood pouring from the bullet wound in his chest. Laborers were ordered off their trucks in small groups, lined up, and executed. There were clashes between Arabs and border police that evening in which six more Arabs were killed. The order to kill had not come from the top. It was traced back conclusively only as far as Major Malinki. When Ben-Gurion heard about the massacre, he was furious, telling his cabinet that the officers who had shot civilians should be hanged in Kfar Kassem’s town square.17 Yet the Israeli government covered the incident up with a press blackout lasting two months.
Alex von Tunzelmann (Blood and Sand: Suez, Hungary, and Eisenhower's Campaign for Peace)
attacks occurred, the FDNY’s response would have been severely compromised by the concentration of so many of its off-duty personnel, particularly its elite personnel, at the WTC. The PortAuthority’s response was hampered by the lack of both standard oper= ating procedures and radios capable of enabling multiple commands
Anonymous
As Jefferson wrote in a letter to Charles Yancey: “The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves, nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.” In the age of our Founders, this human impulse to demand the right of co-creating shared wisdom accounted for the ferocity with which the states demanded protection for free access to the printing press, freedom of assembly, freedom to petition the government, freedom of religion, and freedom of speech. General George Washington, in a speech to officers of the army in 1783, said, “If men are to be precluded from offering their sentiments on a matter which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences that can invite the consideration of mankind, reason is of no use to us; the freedom of speech may be taken away, and dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” But the twentieth century brought its own bitter lessons. The new and incredibly powerful electronic media that began to replace the printing press—first radio and film and then television—were used to indoctrinate millions of Germans, Austrians, Italians, Russians, Japanese, Chinese, and others with elaborate abstract ideologies that made many of them deaf, blind, and numb to the systematic leading of tens of millions of their fellow human beings “to the slaughter.
Al Gore (The Assault on Reason)
Sometimes I feel like I have the spines of a hedgehog. They are a spiky barrier I just can’t retract. I thought I’d managed to lower them a little over the last few months, or at least to thin them out. But then, this week, there they were again: abrupt, prickly, impenetrable. I’ve had a weird, frustrated, angry week. Nothing in particular has happened, but it’s hot, I’m insanely busy at work and not everyone’s being co-operative. But more than that, I feel as though my body’s drawn in on itself. Everything feels and smells wrong. Quite often, just the sound of the radio has been too much for me. If Herbert has tried to talk to me at the same time that it’s on, I’ve barked at him. I can’t bear to be touched. I feel like my skin is too thin. Twice this week I’ve rushed out of bed in the middle of the night, convinced I’ve felt a glut of blood surge out over my legs. Twice I’ve realised I was only dreaming. The mind is slow to catch up with the body. Mine, it seems, is fearfully protective of it. I’m a meditator, and I know that these phases are necessary. Meditation is like the slow action of water on rock. Gradually, it wears through layers and layers of sediment, and every now and then something unknown is exposed to the light, a deposit of ancient bones. These too are eased away in time, but they must be revealed to be soothed away. Over the years, I’ve learned how my body holds an imprint of my fears, a physical defence against them that over the years becomes an immovable ache. This morning, for example, I went to yoga class, only the second one since my gynaecological problems made me give up. Once, I could fold myself in half like a deck-chair, not because of my yogi prowess, but because I had double-jointed hips. Today, I was shocked to discover that I couldn’t bend at all, that my pelvic girdle had tightened itself into a rigid knot. Once I’d got over the flush of humiliation (a seventy-year-old woman was performing a perfect forward bend next to me), I saw just how much I’ve been imagining my body as a fragile thing in need of protection. I have been curled inwards like that hedgehog, and even the parts of my body that I can’t command have joined in. But even realising this, what do I do with the information? It is one thing to understand that my body has rolled up to protect itself, but how can I make it unfurl?
Betty Herbert (The 52 Seductions)
On August 31, 1939, SS men dressed in Polish uniforms took over a radio station inside Germany and broadcast messages urging Poles living in eastern Germany to rebel against the Nazis. The bodies of prison inmates were dressed in Polish uniforms and left on site as if they had perpetrated the act and had been killed by German police.8 The transparent ploy would be cited as a preemptive Polish hostile action by Germany. Despite this, British and French diplomats begged the Polish high command to retract the mobilization order. The next morning German troops stormed across the border and World War II in Europe began.
Kenneth Koskodan (No Greater Ally: The Untold Story of Poland's Forces in World War II (General Military))
the military loves its alphabet soup. At CILHI, I was issued a glossary of acronyms as thick as my arm. KIA/BNR: killed in action, body not recovered. DADCAP: dawn and dusk combat air patrol; AACP: advance airborne command post; TRF: tuned radio frequency. Or trident refit facility. I guess context is important for that one. But you get the idea. It makes a civilian want to join the AAAAAA: the Association for the Abolition of Abused Abbreviations and Asinine Acronyms.
Kathy Reichs (Spider Bones (Temperance Brennan, #13))
AT&T’s telephone lines and Western Union’s telegraph lines were the only direct links between the United States and the Soviet Union. Both of them would be knocked out by a thermonuclear blast, and most radio communications would be, as well. The command-and-control systems of the two countries had no formal, reliable means of interacting. The problem was so serious and so obvious, Schelling thought, everybody must have assumed somebody else had taken care of it. Pauses for negotiation would be a waste of time, if there were no way to negotiate. And
Eric Schlosser (Command and Control)
He promptly commanded Sidqi Mahmud to provide air cover for the conquest of Israel’s coast (Operation Leopard) and to deploy Egypt’s newest Sukhoi jets, if necessary with their Russian instructors. ‘Amer then called Damascus and Baghdad and requested that they execute Operation Rashid—the bombing of Israeli airfields—at once. The Iraqis consented, but then complained of “technical delays.” The Syrians claimed that their planes were presently engaged in a training exercise. Such disappointments did little to dampen the mood in Egypt’s Supreme Headquarters which seemed to the Soviet attaché S. Tarasenko, “tranquil, almost indifferent, the officers merely listening to the radio and drinking coffee.” Throughout the capital, however, the citizenry was celebrating. “The streets were overflowing with demonstrators,” remembered Eric Rouleau, Middle East correspondent for Le Monde. “Anti-aircraft guns were firing. Hundreds of thousands of people were chanting, ‘Down with Israel! We will win the war!’” But Rouleau, together with other foreign journalists, was not allowed near the front. All international phone lines were cut. The sole source of information was the government’s communiqué: “With an aerial strike against Cairo and across the UAR, Israel began its attack today at 9:00. Our planes scrambled and held off the attack.
Michael B. Oren (Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East)
The most important training involved the latest American breakthrough in communications technology: a handheld, portable, two-way radio transceiver that made ground-to-air communications possible for the first time. A predecessor of the mobile telephone, the equipment had been designed at the RCA electronics laboratories in New York before being refined and developed for the OSS by De Witt R. Goddard and Lieutenant Commander Stephen H. Simpson. The device would eventually become known as a “walkie-talkie,” but at the time of its invention this pioneering gizmo went by a more cumbersome and quaint title: the “Joan-Eleanor system.” “Joan” was the name for the handheld transmitter carried by the agent in the field, six inches long and weighing three pounds, with a collapsible antenna; “Eleanor” referred to the larger airborne transceiver carried on an aircraft flying overhead at a prearranged time. Goddard’s wife was named Eleanor, and Joan, a major in the Women’s Army Corps, was Simpson’s girlfriend. The Joan-Eleanor (J-E) system operated at frequencies above 250 MHz, far higher than the Germans could monitor. This prototype VHF (very high frequency) radio enabled the users to communicate for up to twenty minutes in plain speech, cutting out the need for Morse code, encryption, and the sort of complex radio training Ursula had undergone. The words of the spy on the ground were picked up and taped on a wire recorder by an operator housed in a special oxygen-fed compartment in the fuselage of an adapted high-speed de Havilland Mosquito bomber flying at over twenty-five thousand feet, outside the range of German anti-aircraft artillery. An intelligence officer aboard the circling aircraft could communicate directly with the agent below. As a system of communication from behind enemy lines, the J-E was unprecedented, undetectable by the enemy, easy to use, and so secret that it would not be declassified until 1976.
Ben Macintyre (Agent Sonya: Moscow's Most Daring Wartime Spy)
The date was November 23, 1965. One company was in contact. Machinegun fire rattled in the distance. Tom McEnry took pictures of artillery firing support for soldiers in the field. Just after eleven o’clock in the morning, McEnry complained about his light meter. “I can’t get a reading,” he said, shaking the small black instrument in front of him, banging it against his hand. At the same time, field commanders called in on their radios that something strange was happening. ‘I don’t know what it is,’ one officer called, ‘but it’s weird. It’s really gettin, uh, kinda eerie out here.’ The air became still. Insects went quiet. The artillery stopped firing. Radios were silent. The temperature, which had been about eighty-five degrees, dropped to around seventy or seventy-five. The light dimmed, though there were no clouds. The North Vietnamese broke contact. The war stopped. Someone said, ‘Look at the sun!’ Everyone looked up. A thin black disc appeared at the side of the white-yellow sun, obscuring part of it, blocking the light. ‘Far fucking out,’ a soldier said. ‘Would you believe it?’ said another. ‘A fucking ee-clipse? In fucking Veetnam?’ ‘I bet the VC think we done it,’ a GI said. ‘That’s why they took off.’ ‘Shee-it.’ Several minutes passed in near silence. The hand of an unseen presence seemed to move across the tropical savanna. No one spoke. Then the light brightened. The temperature warmed. Insects screeched. A few gunshots cracked. Field radios came alive with chatter and hiss. Artillery boomed. Helicopter blades whacked the air. The war, having skipped a beat, resumed as if nothing had happened.
John Laurence (The Cat From Hue: A Vietnam War Story)
Recently Madhya Pradesh government has discharged achievement for 2 posts in MP constable Department as per advert no. 922/917/2020 / B-3 / 2, 1st post for radio and second post for constable GD. Whose kind are going to be stuffed from 08 Gregorian calendar month 2021 to fourteen Gregorian calendar month 2021. and therefore the correction date are going to be until nineteenth Gregorian calendar month. and therefore the examination are going to be command in March 2021. Candidates WHO wish to fill this kind will fill the net form and there ar a complete of 4000 posts during this department. Please scan the official notification before applying on-line. keep connected with our web site for additional info. alljobalert.info
alljobalert.info
When Ronald Reagan was a radio announcer, he used to call baseball games that he did not physically attend by reading the terse descriptions that trickled in over the telegraph wire and were printed out on a paper tape. He would sit there, all by himself in a padded room with a microphone, and the paper tape would creep out of the machine and crawl over the palm of his hand printed with cryptic abbreviations. If the count went to three and two, Reagan would describe the scene as he saw it in his mind’s eye: “The brawny left-hander steps out of the batter’s box to wipe the sweat from his brow. The umpire steps forward to sweep the dirt from home plate,” and so on. When the cryptogram on the paper tape announced a base hit, he would whack the edge of the table with a pencil, creating a little sound effect, and describe the arc of the ball as if he could actually see it. His listeners, many of whom presumably thought that Reagan was actually at the ballpark watching the game, would reconstruct the scene in their minds according to his descriptions. This is exactly how the World Wide Web works: the HTML files are the pithy description on the paper tape, and your web browser is Ronald Reagan. The same is true of graphical user interfaces in general.
Neal Stephenson (In the Beginning...Was the Command Line)
9. Pilots worry about how their call signs will sound over the radio, which does not transmit either the very high or the very low frequencies in the human voice. This slight alteration sometimes renders a familiar sound unrecognizable. I remember well one fighter group call sign, “Flit Gun,” which was always misunderstood by ground controllers when transmitted by the squeaky voice of our excitable group commander. “Roger, Six Gun,” they would say, and he would tartly reply, “No, it’s Flit Gun.” “Roger, Six Gun.” That would destroy him. “No, goddamn it, Flit Gun! Flit! Flit!” It was a pleasure to fly in his formation and share these military moments.
Michael Collins (Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut's Journey)
The entire time the Ranger commander was on the radio with his guys. He was talking, giving orders—‘Do this, look out for that.’ He was acting like a coach on the sidelines yelling plays. At some point this commander notices I’m not saying a word, and he gives me this look, almost in disbelief. Like, why aren’t you telling your guys what to do? It was pretty striking. Our guys and their guys, doing the same mission. He’s talking the whole time, and we aren’t saying a thing. And the answer is, because we don’t need to. I know my guys are going to solve the problems themselves.
Daniel Coyle (The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups)
In his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl argued that a life purpose is not some mystical fairy tale, but the reality of every single human being on our planet. What is more, having an understanding of your life’s purpose has life-saving potential. He observed this while being detained in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. Similar experiences were recounted by the survivors from USS Indianapolis, a United States heavy cruiser that was sunk at the end of the World War II. The need to maintain radio silence meant nobody in naval command knew about the attack until days afterwards. The survivors had several nights in the water before rescue came. They reported that virtually everybody wanted to give up their struggle for life at one point or another. The effort to stay afloat so long was overwhelming. Some did give up and died. But the rest, when tempted to quit the effort, focused on their reasons to keep fighting. They encouraged each other with thoughts of people who depended on them in their civil lives: spouses, parents, siblings, and kids. If someone had no one to live for, others would tell them about those in their future who would surely need them—their future spouses and kids. They had a reason to survive: wanting to be there for others who needed them. Those sailors became committed to fulfill this, and their commitment was enough to keep them alive. A good reason is a magnificent tool. A reason-powered motivation can save your life in more than one way. We’ve seen how a reliance on emotion-filled inspiration derived from others doesn’t ultimately motivate you at all if your core values are not involved. However, that does not mean that emotions won’t help you. Far from it. Just be aware of the limitations of relying on your emotions to power consistent action. Emotions are elusive in their nature, but as long as they last, they can boost your abilities many-fold. Emotions give you the ability to get fired-up to begin something. You’ve probably heard the saying, “Well begun is half done.” Starting is the action that magically produces progress. Consider things you’ve begun in the past. One moment you were doing nothing, so had exactly zero potential to reach your goal. Then you made a decision that you would do this and a surge of enthusiasm moved you forward. You were in motion; you’d started. An infinite ocean of possibilities had opened in front of you. Any decision to start something will have this effect.
Michal Stawicki (The Art of Persistence: Stop Quitting, Ignore Shiny Objects and Climb Your Way to Success)
In life you will face a lot of Circuses. You will pay for your failures. But, if you persevere, if you let those failures teach you and strengthen you, then you will be prepared to handle life’s toughest moments. July 1983 was one of those tough moments. As I stood before the commanding officer, I thought my career as a Navy SEAL was over. I had just been relieved of my SEAL squadron, fired for trying to change the way my squadron was organized, trained, and conducted missions. There were some magnificent officers and enlisted men in the organization, some of the most professional warriors I had ever been around. However, much of the culture was still rooted in the Vietnam era, and I thought it was time for a change. As I was to find out, change is never easy, particularly for the person in charge. Fortunately, even though I was fired, my commanding officer allowed me to transfer to another SEAL Team, but my reputation as a SEAL officer was severely damaged. Everywhere I went, other officers and enlisted men knew I had failed, and every day there were whispers and subtle reminders that maybe I wasn’t up to the task of being a SEAL. At that point in my career I had two options: quit and move on to civilian life, which seemed like the logical choice in light of my recent Officer Fitness Report, or weather the storm and prove to others and myself that I was a good SEAL officer. I chose the latter. Soon after being fired, I was given a second chance, an opportunity to deploy overseas as the Officer in Charge of a SEAL platoon. Most of the time on that overseas deployment we were in remote locations, isolated and on our own. I took advantage of the opportunity to show that I could still lead. When you live in close quarters with twelve SEALs there isn’t anywhere to hide. They know if you are giving 100 percent on the morning workout. They see when you are first in line to jump out of the airplane and last in line to get the chow. They watch you clean your weapon, check your radio, read the intelligence, and prepare your mission briefs. They know when you have worked all night preparing for tomorrow’s training. As month after month of the overseas deployment wore on, I used my previous failure as motivation to outwork, outhustle, and outperform everyone in the platoon. I sometimes fell short of being the best, but I never fell short of giving it my best. In time, I regained the respect of my men. Several years later I was selected to command a SEAL Team of my own. Eventually I would go on to command all the SEALs on the West Coast.
William H. McRaven (Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life...And Maybe the World)
Salmon's crew was extremely lucky to be alive. A very heavy depth charging had dished in the pressure hull, knocked one engine off the base plate, severely damaged all radio and radar equipment, and caused major structural damage throughout the ship. Exhausted and forced to the surface by three escort vessels, she took them on with the deck gun, picking her way in and out of rain squalls. At the peak of the gunfight, a box of galley stores was inadvertently passed topside as ammunition. Dick claimed that on a close pass by one of the escorts, the gun crew threw potatoes at the enemy, using oranges for tracers. I doubt this. We never had oranges that late in the patrol.
Paul R. Schratz (Submarine Commander: A Story of World War II and Korea)
(23) War-fighting commanders may find themselves bereft of communications faculties on which they have become reliant in peacetime training. Most forms of radio-transmissions can
Andrew Gordon (Rules of Game: Jutland and British Naval Command)
The only one to remain in his vehicle, was my radio operator, who was sending off my messages. Next to the vehicle, stood my intelligence officer, who passed on to the operator what I shouted across to him. Then a machine—I thought I recognized the Canadian emblem—approached for a low-flying attack on the armored radio station. At 20 yards, I could clearly see the pilot’s face under his flight helmet. But instead of shooting, he signaled with his hand for the radio officer to clear off, and pulled his machine up into a great curve. “Get the operator out of the vehicle,” I shouted, “and take cover, the pair of you.” The machine had turned and now came at us out of the sun for the second time. This time, he fired his rockets and hit the radio car, fortunately, without doing too much damage. This attitude of the pilot, whether he was Canadian or British, became for me, the example of fairness in this merciless war. I shall never forget the pilot’s face or the gesture of his hand.
Hans von Luck (Panzer Commander: The Memoirs of Colonel Hans von Luck (World War II Library))
On the afternoon of August 9, hearing the news that Nagasaki had been bombed, Emperor Hirohito called an imperial conference at which his ministers debated the wisdom of surrender. After hours of talk, at 2 a.m. Hirohito stated that he felt Japan should accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, terms of surrender proposed in late July by Truman (who had only become president on Roosevelt’s death in April). But Potsdam called for the emperor to step down; and his ministers insisted that their acceptance depended on Hirohito being allowed to remain as sovereign—an astute demand that would ensure a sense of national exoneration. James F. Byrnes, the U.S. secretary of state, did not deal directly with this, and on August 14 Japan surrendered at Hirohito’s command. The next day, the entire country heard with astonishment the first radio broadcast from a supreme ruler, now telling them squeakily, in the antiquated argot of the imperial court, that he was surrendering to save all mankind “from total extinction.” Until then, Japan’s goal had been full, all-out war, as a country wholly committed; any Japanese famously preferred to die for the emperor rather than to surrender. (One hundred million die together! was the slogan.) Today the goal was surrender: all-out peace. It was the emperor’s new will. Later that day a member of his cabinet, over the radio, formally denounced the United States for ignoring international law by dropping the atomic bombs. In 1988, on the forty-seventh anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, when the mayor of Nagasaki accused Hirohito of responsibility for the war and its numerous atrocities, he inadvertently stirred up petitions for his own impeachment, and nationwide protests and riots calling for his assassination. A month afterward, in January 1989, Hirohito died at age eighty-seven, still emperor of Japan. Eleven days later the mayor, whom the Nagasaki police were no longer protecting, was shot in the back. He barely survived.
George Weller (First Into Nagasaki: The Censored Eyewitness Dispatches on Post-Atomic Japan and Its Prisoners of War)
In l982, however, the success of the KFAC broadcasts was so apparent that I dropped all newspaper advertising and put the money into outright commercials for Trader Joe’s. These were broadcast on demographically suited radio stations: mostly all-news or all-classical. This is still the pattern followed by Trader Joe’s. About the format of the sixty-second radio spots, which has attracted a lot of attention in media circles: I think that most radio commercials are terrible. They have too many “production values.” Even worse, they issue commands to the listener: “Buy this!” “Shop now!” “Hurry!” One should never use a mandatory sentence in addressing a customer; should never give orders. The subliminal message of a Trader Joe’s commercial is, “We’re gonna be around for a long time. If you miss out on this bargain, there’ll be another. If you have the time and inclination . . .” Most supermarket radio spots are paid for by cooperative advertising allowances from manufacturers. The supermarkets jam as many brands into sixty seconds as possible, because it maximizes their revenue. Information be damned! In sharp contrast, each Trader Joe’s spot was devoted to a single product, about which we tried to develop a story.
Joe Coulombe (Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys)
AS WE REACQUAINT OURSELVES WITH OUR BREATHING BODIES, then the perceived world itself begins to shift and transform. When we begin to consciously frequent the wordless dimension of our sensory participations, certain phenomena that have habitually commanded our focus begin to lose their distinctive fascination and to slip toward the background, while hitherto unnoticed or overlooked presences begin to stand forth from the periphery and to engage our awareness. The countless human artifacts with which we are commonly involved—the asphalt roads, chain-link fences, telephone wires, buildings, lightbulbs, ballpoint pens, automobiles, street signs, plastic containers, newspapers, radios, television screens—all begin to exhibit a common style, and so to lose some of their distinctiveness; meanwhile, organic entities—crows, squirrels, the trees and wild weeds that surround our house, humming insects, streambeds, clouds and rainfalls—all these begin to display a new vitality, each coaxing the breathing body into a unique dance. Even boulders and rocks seem to speak their own uncanny languages of gesture and shadow, inviting the body and its bones into silent communication. In contact with the native forms of the earth, one’s senses are slowly energized and awakened, combining and recombining in ever-shifting patterns.
David Abram (The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World)
After nightfall, when most of the American planes had been taken aboard, a new formation of planes arrived over the task force. First, the drone of their engines could be heard above the cloud cover; then they slipped into view, at about the height of the Lexington’s masts. “These planes were in very good formation,” recalled Lieutenant Commander Stroop. They had their navigation lights on, indicating that they intended to land. But many observers on both carriers and several of the screening vessels noted that something was awry. Captain Sherman of the Lexington counted nine planes, more than could be accounted for among the American planes that were still aloft. They were flying down the Yorktown’s port side, a counterclockwise approach, the reverse of the American landing routine. They were flashing their blinker lights, but none of the Americans could decipher the signal. Electrician’s mate Peter Newberg, stationed on the Yorktown’s flight deck, noticed that the aircraft exhausts were a strange shape and color, and Stroop noted that the running lights were a peculiar shade of red and blue. The TBS (short-range radio circuit) came alive with chatter. One of the nearby destroyers asked, “Have any of our planes got rounded wingtips?” Another voice said, “Damned if those are our planes.” When the first of the strangers made his final turn, he was too low, and the Yorktown’s landing signal officer frantically signaled him to throttle up. “In the last few seconds,” Newberg recalled, “when the pilot was about to plow into the stern under the flight deck, he poured the coal to his engine and pulled up and off to port. The signal light flicked briefly on red circles painted on his wings.” One of the screening destroyers opened fire, and red tracers reached up toward the leading plane. A voice on the Lexington radioed to all ships in the task force, ordering them to hold fire, but the captain of the destroyer replied, “I know Japanese planes when I see them.” Antiaircraft gunners on ships throughout the task force opened fire, and suddenly the night sky lit up as if it was the Fourth of July. But there were friendly planes in the air as well; one of the Yorktown fighter pilots complained: “What are you shooting at me for? What have I done now?” On the Yorktown, SBD pilot Harold Buell scrambled out to the port-side catwalk to see what was happening. “In the frenzy of the moment, with gunners firing at both friend and foe, some of us got caught up in the excitement and drew our .45 Colt automatics to join in, blasting away at the red meatballs as they flew past the ship—an offensive gesture about as effective as throwing rocks.” The intruders and the Americans all doused their lights and zoomed back into the cloud cover; none was shot down. It was not the last time in the war that confused Japanese pilots would attempt to land on an American carrier.
Ian W. Toll (Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941–1942)
For twelve minutes George White Rogers sat calmly by the main transmitter, waiting for an official order to summon outside help. Rogers had been sound asleep in his bunk when the fire alarm sounded. George Alagna had had to shake him quite hard to wake him. The two men dressed quickly and joined Maki in the radio room. Rogers tuned to the main six-hundred-meter distress frequency, and threw the switch into a position which would ensure that the transmitter would produce a very broad interfering path. Evidence of fire was quite apparent from the radio shack. As far as the radio operators could tell, it seemed to be just below and forward on the port side, by the writing room. The radio room was filling with smoke. When Rogers went to the door he could see the reflection of the flames and hear shouting and confused commands.
Gordon Thomas (Shipwreck: The Strange Fate of the Morro Castle)
At exactly 8:45 P.M., George Alagna tuned the receiver in the radio shack to the six-hundred-meter frequency, the distress wave band for ships at sea. The mandatory three-minute period of silent “listening out” is an international watch kept by all ships at sea. For three minutes at precisely fifteen minutes past and fifteen minutes before each hour, every marine radio operator on duty stops transmitting and tunes to the emergency channel, listening for even the weakest distress signal. Junior Operator George Maki watched carefully as Alagna fine-tuned the instruments. Maki himself sometimes found it difficult to locate the frequency; on several occasions Chief Radio Officer Rogers had noticed Maki’s hesitation, and he used each occasion to give Maki a tongue-lashing. Ever since Rogers had assumed command of the wireless room, his hostility toward Maki had increased. The chief radio officer made special note of each of Maki’s faults: he was slow on direction finding, decoding meteorological bulletins, and switching smoothly across the transmitting and receiving wave bands. Maki knew his career as a radioman would be terminated abruptly if Rogers made a report to the Radiomarine Corporation. Rogers chose not to file any official complaint; instead, he kept Maki on as a personal whipping boy, somebody he could verbally castigate whenever he wanted to.
Gordon Thomas (Shipwreck: The Strange Fate of the Morro Castle)
The Germans found out where the camp of our partisan unit was. They cordoned off the forest and the approaches to it on all sides. We hid in the wild thickets, we were saved by the swamps where the punitive forces didn’t go. A quagmire. It sucked in equipment and people for good. For days, for weeks, we stood up to our necks in water. Our radio operator was a woman who had recently given birth. The baby was hungry…It had to be nursed…But the mother herself was hungry and had no milk. The baby cried. The punitive forces were close…With dogs…If the dogs heard it, we’d all be killed. The whole group—thirty of us…You understand? The commander makes a decision… Nobody can bring himself to give the mother his order, but she figures it out herself. She lowers the swaddled baby into the water and holds it there for a long time…The baby doesn’t cry anymore…Not a sound…And we can’t raise our eyes. Neither to the mother nor to each other…
Svetlana Alexievich (War's Unwomanly Face)
The Admiral is one smooth talker on the radio. Most important in this business was his willingness to risk everything for his fellow man, an unhealthy but common trait among air force combat controllers.
Dalton Fury (Kill Bin Laden: A Delta Force Commander's Account of the Hunt for the World's Most Wanted Man)
The majority of such losses and damage were quite unnecessary. Over one thousand ships were lost through collision and grounding alone, owing to a variety of reasons, perhaps the most important of which was undue insistence on not burning navigation lights and on maintaining radio silence. There were areas round the coast which, at certain periods of the war, were entirely safe from submarine or air attack, but which were highly dangerous navigationally. Yet ships battled on, darkened, without any navigation lights, and the collisions which occurred were inevitable. Similarly to break W/T silence to request a position when lost somewhere off the north-west coast of Scotland or Ireland would, again, at certain periods of the war, have been quite safe from the point of view of enemy attack and would have ensured the safety of ships from grounding, yet the rules were never relaxed. Let us hope again that this lesson will be remembered by future planners and that flexibility in the instructions will be allowed.
Peter Gretton (Convoy Escort Commander: A Memoir of the Battle of the Atlantic (Submarine Warfare in World War Two))
To heave to a convoy requires moral courage, for it is usually extremely difficult, if not impossible, to keep the ships together. I found, however, that by making the signal on low-power radio, ‘Heave to, keeping the wind on the bow’, it was possible to keep the convoy together, for as the wind shifted, ships automatically adjusted their heading, whereas if an attempt were made to heave to on a definite course, alterations would constantly be required which in such weather conditions were impossible to pass by flags. The communications experts disapproved of my breaking radio silence but it was only necessary to make one signal, and I believed that the risk was well worth taking, for the danger from the sea was far greater than from the enemy. During the worst gales many of the ships, particularly those in ballast, became unmanageable. The visibility would drop to about half a mile and control was quite impossible. In any case, the enemy could do little about it if they did hear the signal.
Peter Gretton (Convoy Escort Commander: A Memoir of the Battle of the Atlantic (Submarine Warfare in World War Two))
And Muetzelburgh, another ace, recounts how in March 1941, when searching for a convoy reported by the Radio Interception Service ‘the noise of propellers was heard on the hydrophones. It resembled a dull, subterranean grinding noise.’ The U-boat surfaced, the visibility was excellent, but nothing could be seen. Only after over an hour and a half’s steaming in the direction of the noise was the top of a mast sighted over the horizon.
Peter Gretton (Convoy Escort Commander: A Memoir of the Battle of the Atlantic (Submarine Warfare in World War Two))
The great, secret and special American guilt of owning nothing, nothing at all, in the one land where ownership and virtue are one. Guilt that lay crouched behind every billboard which gave each man his commandments; for each man here had failed the billboards all down the line. No Ford in this one’s future nor ever any place all his own. Had failed before the radio commercials, by the streetcar plugs and by the standards of every self-respecting magazine. With his own eyes he had seen the truer Americans mount the broad stone stairways to success surely and swiftly and unaided by others; he was always the one left alone, it seemed at last, without enough sense of honor to climb off a West Madison Street Keep-Our-City-Clean box and not enough ambition to raise his eyes back to the billboards.
Nelson Algren (The Man with the Golden Arm)
In they hurtled — Lieutenant Commander Takahashi’s 27 dive-bombers plunging toward Ford Island and Hickam …. Lieutenant Commander Murata’s 40 torpedo planes swinging into position for their run at the big ships. Commander Fuchida marked time off Barbers Point with the horizontal bombers, watching his men go in. They were all attacking together instead of in stages as originally planned, but it would apparently make no difference — the ships were sitting ducks. A few minutes earlier, at 7:49 A.M., Fuchida had radioed the signal to attack: “To … to … to … to …” Now he was so sure of victory that at 7:53 — even before the first bomb fell — he signaled the carriers that the surprise attack was successful: “Tora … tora … tora …
Walter Lord (Day of Infamy)
The supply ship Antares (AG-10) was inbound to Pearl Harbor, heading toward the submarine nets protecting the entrance channel. Between Antares and the barge it was towing, Captain Outerbridge made out the unmistakable silhouette of the conning tower and periscope of an unknown submarine. There was no doubt in his mind that this was an intruder intent on following Antares through the open submarine nets and into the harbor. Outerbridge called for speed and ordered a turn toward the target as the Ward surged to twenty knots. At 6:45 a.m. the destroyer fired two shots from its four-inch guns. The first passed directly over the submarine’s conning tower and missed. The second hit the submarine at the waterline between the conning tower and its hull. As the Ward’s action report later characterized it, “This was a square positive hit.” The target heeled over to starboard and appeared to slow and sink, drifting into a tightly spaced salvo of depth charges set for 100 feet that the Ward dropped as it crossed the submarine’s bow. Outerbridge couldn’t be certain, but a large oil slick on the surface after the depth charges exploded indicated that his quarry had likely sunk. He radioed a voice transmission saying the Ward had “dropped depth charges upon subs,” but two minutes later, fearing that the report might be taken merely as one more in a long line of sketchy contacts, Outerbridge made clear that this had been no illusion: “We have attacked, fired upon, and dropped depth charges on a submarine operating in defensive sea area,” he radioed. Seconds later, just to be certain his information had been received, Outerbridge queried, “Did you get that last message?” The answer was yes, and the report made its way up the chain of command, reaching Admiral Kimmel about forty minutes later. Like others who’d relayed the message, Kimmel was skeptical. “I was not at all certain that this was a real attack,” he later told investigators. It would take sixty years before a Japanese midget submarine was discovered in some twelve hundred feet of water with a hole in its conning tower—evidence that Outerbridge and the Ward had indeed inflicted the first casualties of the day.4
Walter R. Borneman (Brothers Down: Pearl Harbor and the Fate of the Many Brothers Aboard the USS Arizona)
Power levels were dropped so low that even voice communications were difficult. Removing carbon dioxide from the air was another serious problem. Lithium hydroxide normally did the job but there wasn’t enough of it. The only additional supply they had was in the Command Module, and its canisters were cube-shaped whereas the Lunar Module’s sockets were cylindrical. It looked like the men would suffocate before they made it back. In one of the most inspired brainstorming sessions of all time, engineers on the ground got out all the kit that the crew would have available. They then improvised a ‘mailbox’ that would join the two incompatible connections and draw the air through. The air was becoming more poisonous with every breath as the astronauts followed the meticulous radio instructions to build the Heath Robinson repair. Amazingly, it worked. They would have enough clean air. But they weren’t out of the woods yet. They needed to re-enter the atmosphere in the Command Module, but it had been totally shut down to preserve its power. Would it start up again? Its systems hadn’t been designed to do this. Again, engineers and crew on the ground had to think on their feet if their friends were to live. They invented an entirely new protocol that would power the ship back up with the limited power supply and time available without blowing the system. They also feared that condensation in the unpowered and freezing cold Command Module might damage electrical systems when it was reactivated. It booted up first time. Back to Earth with a splash With Apollo 13 nearing Earth, the crew jettisoned the Service Module and photographed the damage for later analysis. Then they jettisoned the redundant Lunar Module, leaving them sitting tight in the Command Module Odyssey as they plunged into the atmosphere.
Collins Maps (Extreme Survivors: 60 of the World’s Most Extreme Survival Stories)
It’s the radio, you see. The radio makes everyone feel the same thing at the same time. Instead of millions of various thoughts, one big psychological fixation. The radio commands our gut response.
Barbara Kingsolver (The Lacuna)
Bobbie, when you were active Martian Marine Corps, did your Goliath suits have a command override?” “A what?” Bobbie said. “Command override. Something that let your commanding officer shut the suit down?” “Sure, we called it a radio. CO said stand down, and we did.
James S.A. Corey (Persepolis Rising (The Expanse, #7))
In idealizing or romanticizing America, a Jewish songwriter would inevitably change it. Irving Berlin suppressed his own Jewish identity, but he also did something much more dramatic and extraordinary. In a memorable riff in Operation Shylock (1993), Philip Roth dubs Berlin “the greatest Diasporist of all” and writes, “The radio was playing ‘Easter Parade’ and I thought, but this is Jewish genius on a par with the Ten Commandments. God gave Moses the Ten Commandments and then He gave to Irving Berlin ‘Easter Parade’ and ‘White Christmas.’ The two holidays that celebrate the divinity of Christ—the divinity that’s the very heart of the Jewish rejection of Christianity—and what does Irving Berlin brilliantly do? He de-Christs them both! Easter he turns into a fashion show and Christmas into a holiday about snow.” The passage is hilarious, the tone that of a tummler, but the argument couldn’t be more serious. “Is that so disgraceful a means of defusing the enmity of centuries? Is anyone really dishonored by this? If schlockified Christianity is Christianity cleansed of Jew hatred, then three cheers for schlock. If supplanting Jesus Christ with snow can enable my people to cozy up to Christmas, then let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.”21 Though the passage is unequivocal in its endorsement of Berlin’s “means of defusing the enmity of centuries,” note that Roth himself, whom Jewish critics used to lecture for showing disrespect to the fathers and the faith, could not sound more Jewish in this passage and in Operation Shylock as a glorious whole. The
David Lehman (A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs (Jewish Encounters Series))
During the assault on Fallujah, Marine commanders intercepted an enemy radio conversation and heard an insurgent say, “We are fighting, but the Marines keep coming. We are shooting, but the Marines won’t stop.
Robert Coram (Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine)
Has anybody even talked to Dr. Shields yet?" Willie shrugged. Then his radio crackled again. "We've set up the command post in the Shieldses' front yard, under a stand of trees. Tell Carl to get his ass up here, ricky-tick." "You heard the man," said Willie. Carl exhaled long and slow, trying to prepare himself for the blast of testosterone he would encounter a few hundred yards up the street.
Greg Iles (Third Degree)
The Police Dispatch radio crackled to life breaking the silence of an otherwise dead night. Tammy listened to a dialogue of unfamiliar ten codes between the beach zone car and the nightshift Watch Commander. Tammy was alone as her supervisor Patty had gone outside for a cigarette break. She heard an officer say, “…possible signal-five at MacWilliams Park.” She checked the police radio code list posted on her console. It read: murder. She frantically ran to the window and banged on the glass to get Patty’s attention.
Jim Kelly (Lost In Paradise: The Rick Edwards File)
The high command sent the order to kill Che at 11:50 a.m. “Guevara was executed with a burst of shots at 1:15 p.m.,” Rodriguez radioed to Tilton. “Guevara’s last words were: ‘Tell my wife to remarry and tell Fidel Castro that the Revolution will rise again in the Americas.’ To his executioner he said, ‘Remember, you are killing a man.
Tim Weiner (Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA)
Then a machine—I thought I recognized the Canadian emblem—approached for a low-flying attack on the armored radio station. At 20 yards, I could clearly see the pilot’s face under his flight helmet. But instead of shooting, he signaled with his hand for the radio officer to clear off, and pulled his machine up into a great curve. “Get the operator out of the vehicle,” I shouted, “and take cover, the pair of you.
Hans von Luck (Panzer Commander: The Memoirs of Colonel Hans von Luck (World War II Library))
Fort Huachuca was home to the army Network Enterprise Technology Command (NETCOM), the Military Auxiliary Radio System (MARS), the Joint Interoperability Test Command, the Information Systems Engineering Command (ISEC), the Electronic Proving Ground, the United States Army Intelligence Center, and Libby Army Airfield. The fort covered seventy-six thousand acres of mountains and desert grasslands.
William Struse (The 13th Symbol: Rise of the Enlightened One (The Thirteenth, #3))
The Health and Human Services emergency command post, just a block from the National Mall in Room 313-10 in its headquarters basement, stocked freeze-dried food sufficient to feed three dozen staff for a month, as well radio gear, an infirmary, and, incongruously, an office for the cabinet secretary decorated with photos of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, just in case the cabinet official forgot what the world outside would have looked like. The
Garrett M. Graff (Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die)
roadway, got trapped under an overpass. FEMA created its own mobile command center effort, known as Mobile Emergency Response Support (MERS) units—eventually building some 300 special vehicles and stationing them across the country at regional command centers. The convoys, the thinking went, would be able to range across the nation, one step ahead of any Soviet attacks, hiding in the vast portions of the country that would be unscathed by nuclear attack. The convoys were meant to be entirely self-sufficient for a month, carrying massive generators and specially equipped fuel tankers that could draw diesel fuel from abandoned gas stations across the country. Meanwhile, a network of as many as 500 radio towers known as GWEN, the Ground Wave
Garrett M. Graff (Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die)
disrupted by the electromagnetic pulse of a nuclear weapon. If Green Pine was knocked out, SAC brought online in October 1967 the first of twelve Emergency Rocket Communication Systems (ERCS) at Missouri’s Whiteman Air Force Base. Instead of a warhead, the special ERCS Minuteman missiles contained a powerful UHF transmitter that would broadcast launch orders to U.S. forces along the missile’s trajectory, creating, in effect, a high-flying radio broadcasting tower. The launch capsules of the 510th were retrofitted with large, floor-mounted telephone consoles that the crews quickly dubbed “knee knockers,” since they hit their knees on it whenever turning their chairs. With the arrival of ERCS, the very last remnants of the U.S. government in a nuclear war would have likely been the voices of the missileers of Whiteman’s 510th Missile Squadron. In an emergency, the crews would use the console to record launch orders onto the ERCS transmitter (the airborne command posts could record an Emergency Action Message remotely). Then either the capsule crew or an airborne command post would have launched the missiles, each set on a different trajectory to blast in a different direction. For thirty minutes after launch, ERCS-equipped Minutemans would broadcast “go codes” to any bomber, submarine, or missile silo along its path, the last communication of a destroyed
Garrett M. Graff (Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die)
He was still too well known as Freddy James, second-rater, to command more than a second-rate salary, so yet another name change was in order. It came about by mistake: through a mixup with an old agent named Edgar Allen, he arrived for a booking to learn that he had been inserted in the program as Fred Allen.
John Dunning (On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio)
General Hagenbeck then did something that should provide a salutary lesson for all future leaders in every profession: he changed his mind! He did this based on the reality-correcting context of the guy on the ground. Despite having stated his previous decision over a satellite radio heard by his superiors and subordinates all across the globe, General Hagenbeck pushed aside his ego and did the right thing. It would turn out to be the right decision for the mission, the right decision for his men, and the right decision for General Hagenbeck.
Pete Blaber (The Mission, The Men, and Me: Lessons from a Former Delta Force Commander)
Because the feeling had come upon me that I was somehow creating a world; that the thoughts I jumped inside were mine, that the bodies I occupied acted at my command; that, as current affairs, arts, sports, the whole rich variety of a first-class radio station poured into me, I was somehow making them happen … which is to say, I had entered into the illusion of the artist, and thought of the multitudinous realities of the land as the raw unshaped material of my gift. “I can find out any damn thing!” I triumphed, “There isn’t a thing I cannot know!
Salman Rushdie (Midnight's Children)
Rommel reached the wood at Cerfontaine on May 16, 1940. He wanted to get through it fast, so as to reach the bunkers themselves before dark—but how, without alerting the bunkers that he was coming? Rommel took the microphone and quietly ordered all tank commanders to drive through the woods, this time without firing a single shot. Their crews—gunner, radio operator, loader and commander—were to ride outside the tanks and wave white flags. He himself rode Colonel Rothenburg’s Panzer IV. Ulrich Schroeder recalled: “The enemy was in fact so startled by this carnivallike procession that instead of shooting at us they just stood back to either side and gaped.
David Irving (THE TRAIL OF THE FOX The Search for the True Field Marshall)
There’s the sound of a scuffle, and the radio sounds like it’s thumped a few times. “Captain, this is Steel Rain. I’ve commandeered this radio for an important broadcast. You’re being too slow, and I want to see Eden. Over.” Dom’s eyes lift skyward, and he clicks his radio back on. “For the last time, we’re not calling you Steel Rain, Lucky. We’re almost there, over.
Rebecca Quinn (Entangled (Brutes of Bristlebrook, #2))
A cavalry scout is generally thought to function as the eyes and ears of a commander during battle. But in fact, a scout’s role extends quite a bit further. We refer to ourselves as “jacks-of-all-trades, masters of none,” and we are trained to have a working familiarity with—quite literally—every job in the army. We are experts in reconnaissance, countersurveillance, and navigation, but we’re also extremely comfortable with all aspects of radio and satellite communications. We know how to assemble and deploy three-man hunter/killer teams. We’re pretty good at blowing things up using mines and high explosives. We can function as medics, vehicle mechanics, and combat engineers. And we have a thorough understanding of every single weapons system, from a 9-mm handgun to a 120-mm howitzer.
Clinton Romesha (Red Platoon: A True Story of American Valor)