Just finished: 'Chaos' By James Gleick.
Just starting: 'The Paladin' By Brian Garfield.
Created 19 years ago2005-03-24 22:08:06 UTC by rowleybob
THE WORST BROADCAST
Few broadcasters have given more unalloyed pleasure than Lt. Commander Tommy Woodroofe. He leapt to public prominence with his now-famous commentary on the illumination of the fleet at Spithead in 1937.
Before the broadcast the Commander had joined in the celebrations with slightly too much enthusiasm. The result was an exquisitely incoherent talk punctuated by pauses of anything up to eleven seconds.
"At the present moment", he began, "the whole fleet is lit up. When I say 'lit up' I mean lit up by fairy lamps. It's fantastic. It isn't a fleet at all. It's just... it's fairy-land. The whole fleet is in fairyland. Now if you'll follow me through... if you don't mind... the next few moments you'll find the fleet doing odd things."
There then followed a lengthy pause. "I'm sorry I was telling some people to shut up talking", the commander explained delightfully.
At this point all lights on the fleet were turned out so that rockets could be fired. The commander's reaction was: "It's gone. It's gone. There's no fleet. It's... it's disappeared. No magician who ever could have waved his wand could have waved it with more acumen than he has now at the present moment. The fleet's gone. It's disappeared."
"I was talking to you in the middle of this damn... <cough> in the middle of this fleet and what's happened is the fleet's gone and disappeared and gone."
At this point Woodroofe was faded out; an announcer said: "That is the end of the Spithead commentary" and dance music came on.
Commander Woodroofe said afterwards that he had been 'overcome by emotion'.
A short history of almost everything - Bill BrysonWas that about string theory? I saw the television documentry of it, if it is, but if it isn't then i didn't. So I did.